Detroit City Income Tax

**MikeyinBrooklyn** · August-06-10, 12:40 PM

The number of city taxpayers declines every single year [[and faster than the rate of population decline). There will eventually be no discernible tax base left, so don't worry about whether or not we should have a tax cut or elimination; the taxes are eliminating the taxable...

Seriously, though, the city income tax is a serious impediment to the city's future. Having to pay several extra percent in taxes versus what you'd pay living just a few miles away does have an impact on people considering a move to Detroit. More significantly, though, it is a strong reason for current residents to leave the city. Move a few miles and give yourself a raise! This also doesn't take into account every single suburb has better municipal services than Detroit. Or that Detroit's income tax is compounded by terribly high property taxes.

Detroit's income taxes are part of the Unholy Trinity that brings Detroit down [[but that Detroit can remedy, if the people are willing to):
1) High taxes
2) Terrible schools [[or virtual non-schools to judge by graduation and literacy rates)
3) High crime

A city council willing free itself from political baggage and fears of reprisal could fix the top two problems in a single day [[admittedly, fixing schools would take years for results to truly take hold; the state legislature would also need to free some of the restrictions on school vouchers that exist today, too). The third problem will never be "fixed" per se, in that there will always be crime; but serious and modern law enforcement practices would bring murder and drug crimes down dramatically in a few years [[like so many cities have done).

Mayor Bing is a little more reform-minded than KK or DA, but it will take significant change to undo more than 50 years of bad laws and administration.

**iheartthed** · August-06-10, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by MikeyinBrooklyn

Seriously, though, the city income tax is a serious impediment to the city's future. Having to pay several extra percent in taxes versus what you'd pay living just a few miles away does have an impact on people considering a move to Detroit.

LOL. Does NYC having a city income tax discourage people from living in Brooklyn?

**Novine** · August-06-10, 01:19 PM

OK Mikey, play Dictator of Detroit for a day. You're in charge. You've just eliminated the income tax, the utility users tax and slashed property taxes to the level of Detroit's suburbs. Now, what services are you going to cut to balance the budget? Every armchair expert has their half-baked solution of "cut taxes!" Now where's the other half of the solution where you actually provide services with the revenue that's left?

**JJD** · August-06-10, 01:30 PM

When I decided to buy my house in Detroit last year there were several things that made it very hard to do. In order of importance they were:

1. Insurance Cost
2. Property Tax - versus the services provided [[paying $6k a year in tax on a house that is depreciating daily is a hard pill to swallow when you know it is being wasted by a corrupt and inept local government)
3. Income tax - Don't have this in many of the better suburbs
4.Safety - Made the Fiancee very nervous, but I love this city and know it is pretty safe if you stay aware of your surroundings and aren't up to no good.

I think if the folks in charge could figure out a way to address the extreme finacial penalty for living in the city, we would see alot of people move in. To be frank, unless you have an irrational love for the city and ton of optimism, there is little reason on paper to move here. We must fix this and I think the city income tax is a big first step.

**Jimaz** · August-06-10, 01:34 PM

Does Detroit receive any revenue from shipping traffic on the Detroit River? Sincerely.

**Novine** · August-06-10, 03:33 PM

JJD - What services are you willing to give up for your tax cut?

**BrushStart** · August-06-10, 04:37 PM

You don't cut taxes drastically so that there is a massive budget deficit. Taxes have to be cut slowly by .1 every 8 months or so over several years. As the population increases, the lower tax rate will be at or near equilibrium. The tax rate doesn't have to be equal to that of the suburbs, only competitive. Detroit should probably have a tax rate of 1% income tax for residents, and .5% for non-residents. Property taxes should not be equal to the 'burbs either, but more competitive. Right now, it is too expensive and a deterrent for people who would otherwise live in the city.

The city should initiate a a multi-year plan to lower taxes and advertise the HELL out of it. People and businesses on the fence will be more willing to move to Detroit if they can expect their taxes to continue to drop until the rates reache a reasonable level more consistent with border communities and other major cities. The rates are not operating at equalibrium and are out of whack. It is hurting the city.

**English** · August-06-10, 05:11 PM

I didn't mind the city income tax for the first 30 years of my life, to be honest. I'd always lived and worked in the city. One doesn't miss a reality that he/she has never lived.

When I moved out five years ago, I was surprised to see how much of a difference it made in my paycheck. I'd earned another step due to service credit from DPS, but I was also working for a district with a slightly higher payscale, and I was no longer paying any city income tax. The result was a nice pay boost.

Now that I work in the city again, I have to admit, paying that tax again was a bit of a shocker when I got the first paycheck. However, it's not going to stop me from purchasing property in the city. I'd be willing to pay even higher taxes if it would make the neighborhoods a little bit safer and the schools a little bit better. Most residents of world-class cities pay higher taxes than we do across the board, especially higher sales taxes.

EastSider · August-06-10, 06:11 PM

This is the break-down of my summer tax bill:

63.27880 mills total

6.00000 State Education
9.97600 General City
8.91570 Debt Service
4.63070 Library
13.00000 School Debt
17.83080 School Operating
0.10150 School Judgment
2.82410 Wayne County Tax

Less than 16% of my property taxes are under the direct control of the city's budget process. Another 14% is paying for past "stupid ideas."

Looking at those numbers, the entity that drives up property taxes to insane levels is DPS, coming in at almost 48%, which is also the entity driving families away.

I don't know if it's possible, but can DPS be dissolved through bankruptcy and a new educational system put in place, to get out from under that crushing tax burden?

**Hermod** · August-06-10, 06:17 PM

Originally Posted by Jimaz

Does Detroit receive any revenue from shipping traffic on the Detroit River? Sincerely.

No, because most of it is just passing through. It is only when ships dock that you become a port and make money off transhipment.

**Jimaz** · August-06-10, 07:13 PM

Thanks, Hermod. I was just wondering how that worked.

Maybe Detroit could float a large toll booth barge out there to get some funds.

Or sell maps to the Fabulous Detroit River Minefield.

Half kidding.

**Novine** · August-06-10, 10:02 PM

"Taxes have to be cut slowly by .1 every 8 months or so over several years. As the population increases, the lower tax rate will be at or near equilibrium."

Detroit's tax rate has decreased over the past 10 years. Detroit's population has dropped with it. I'm not saying the two are connected but the idea that cutting taxes would lead to more people moving into the city hasn't panned out, has it?

**professorscott** · August-06-10, 11:27 PM

Fundamentally, Detroit has not figured out how to compete with its own suburbs for people and businesses. The city income tax is just one of a thousand symptoms of this. The four-point-whatever million people in the metro area can choose to live wherever in the region they like; every year, fewer and fewer of them are choosing the City.

There are a thousand reasons for this but the most fundamental one is cost vs. quality of services. If I'm selling really bad lemonade for a dollar and you are selling pretty decent lemonade for sixty cents, I'm out of business pretty damn quick.

I was amazed to find out, when flying on business years ago, that you can clearly and definitely see the Detroit-Dearborn border from the air. There is no physical difference between Detroit and Dearborn, only a difference in governance. [[You can plead poverty but that didn't come first; it followed.)

Detroit, if it wants to stem the hemorrhaging of people and businesses, has got to figure out how to be competitive with Southfield and Dearborn and Roseville and Livonia and Taylor and Utica. One of the many things that makes it uncompetitive is the income tax. When I suggested earlier in this thread to kill it, one of the responses was something along the lines of, "you don't understand; running Detroit is much different than running Royal Oak" [[or whatever the comparison city was). The point, though, is that the public doesn't give a shit. Figure out how to run the City [[and DPS, etc.) on a realistic budget so that you don't have to give residents yet one more penalty for choosing to live in the City.

For Christ's sake, people have been fleeing in droves for nearly sixty years; let's not keep chasing them out. They don't need the extra incentive, trust me.

**professorscott** · August-06-10, 11:53 PM

Let's ask, for instance: how many people does a big city need to employ? If we take four cities of similar population in the US, let's say Dallas, San Jose, Detroit and Jacksonville, and we ask how many city employees there are compared to the number of residents, here's what we get:

Detroit: 1 city employee for every 67 residents
Dallas: 1 city employee for every 95 residents
Jacksonville: 1 city employee for every 96 residents
San Jose: 1 city employee for every 140 residents

If we decided it was reasonable to be as efficient as the next-worse city, in terms of how many employees we ought to have working for the City directly, then the City could save nearly 30% of its overall labor cost. The purpose of the City isn't to be an employer; it is to provide services that residents need.

**Hermod** · August-07-10, 05:26 AM

Originally Posted by Jimaz

Thanks, Hermod. I was just wondering how that worked.

Maybe Detroit could float a large toll booth barge out there to get some funds.

Or sell maps to the Fabulous Detroit River Minefield.

Half kidding.

The day of the "robber barons" [[where the term originated) on the Rhine River being able to collect tolls from the passing barges is long gone.

The US and Canadians have a treaty on "free passage" on the Great Lakes waterways.

**Novine** · August-07-10, 10:40 PM

"There are a thousand reasons for this but the most fundamental one is cost vs. quality of services. If I'm selling really bad lemonade for a dollar and you are selling pretty decent lemonade for sixty cents, I'm out of business pretty damn quick."

True but if you think the key to Detroit's survival is to win the cost game with the suburbs, you might as well turn out the lights. Detroit, no matter how well it's run, is never going to win that game. Property values are always going to be higher in the suburbs. That translates into lower property tax rates for the suburbs. Also, the suburbs don't have the same demand for services as the city. That means the suburbs have to raise less in revenue to pay for a lower level of service than Detroit. No matter how much Detroit cuts its costs, it's never going to be able to match the suburbs on cost of services or rate of taxation. On top of that, the people and businesses who focus first on taxes are the people and businesses who are never going to move into Detroit in any case.

**Huggybear** · August-08-10, 01:49 AM

It's actually pretty entertaining to hear an argument like #1 below because it suggests this argument [[or arguments): "Detroit has been losing residents for years. Most of the suburban communities have [fewer minorities/drainage ditches instead of storm sewers/white-painted curbs/strip malls]. Therefore, Detroit should [be racist/dig up the storm drains/paint the curbs white/replace streetside retain with strip malls]." You're falling into the classic fallacy of fixating on one variable - a close cousin of the old "y happened after x; therefore, x caused why."

The first variable I would try to eliminate, before concluding that income taxes mean anything, is the social norm that was created in which "white people live in the suburbs and black people live in the city." Let's connect the dots.

1. World War II hauls hundreds of thousands of rural southern whites to a segregated Detroit.

2. Race riots occur in 1943.

3. World War II ends and baby boom commences. All of a sudden, Detroit is bursting at the seams, and 900 sq ft bungalows now house families of five or more.

4. The federal government begins subsidizing loans for GIs. Loans are in undeveloped suburban areas. The GIs are predominately white, basically everyone who was an able-bodied white men from 1942-1945. At the same time, banks are redlining non-whites.

5. The United States Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer, effectively ending the use of restrictive covenants that were used to keep Detroit segregated. Brown v. Board of Education follows, eliminating school segregation.

6. The federal and state governments begin building a massive infrastructure of interstate and state highways that allow the people who were able to buy houses in the suburbs to separate themselves from cities and get to more spacious suburban homes.

7. Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending [[at least on paper) most types of racial discrimination.

8. Detroit proceeds to lose one million people between 1952 [[peak population) and the 1970 census [[this entire period under white mayors). The 1967 riots did not, per stats released in 2007, cause any appreciable increase in depopulation.

9. The city continues to lose population through the 1980s, a period when both city government and the schools were still functional.

I combine this with my own experience, which was that the first I ever heard of the income tax was overhearing office workers bitching about being transferred downtown. Until then, among outgoing Detroit residents, it had been a discussion that centered around "safety," and "property values," both of which are proxies for you-know-what. From all of this, I have concluded that the city's downfall was due to some combination of [[1) small houses and lots and [[2) a pretty serious racial animosity, fueled by fear and enabled by subsidization, that changed social norms first among the white population and then the rest of the middle class. On the second point, I'll put it out there that people don't live in Detroit because they have a gut reaction against it that doesn't stop to ask whether the income tax is higher or not.

I think that if you sat down, did a survey, and plotted among Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y the elasticity of demand for living in Detroit, you would find that the cost of living reduction needed to induce an average person in this area to live and work in Detroit would be far greater than 2.5% of his or her income. I think you'd find that the reduced water and sewerage costs [[for a lot of people equal to the city tax) would be meaningless - as would the absolute-dollar reduction in property taxes. The difference, among people who due to age or circumstances are not in the market for public-school education, would represent the influence of the intangible "norm."

I think the single best piece of evidences that taxes have zero to do with the issue is that there were Enterprise and Renaissance zones left on the table during the Clinton and Bush administrations. These did not represent trivial, 2.5% changes in taxation. These were big cuts across multiple types of taxes, even for corporations and people who did not have kids in school [[eliminating that from the discussion of "why not"). But they never got near their potential. According to what has been postulated here about lower taxes meaning more investment, they should have been overrun.

The basic "white/middle class people don't live there" mentality is so toxic and internalized that you have at least one entire generation [[Generation Y and beyond) that sees cities [[well, at Detroit) as undesirable, that reflexively calls Detroit "the ghetto" and practices a type of studied financial illiteracy to make a monetary case [[or, more precisely, to justify that of their parents).

As long as all of this is going on, Detroit will be recruiting from outside the area and a small group of Gen X and Gen Y people who remembered what it was like when it was functional and are trying to get it back there. It some ways, it may be better to stop proselytizing suburbanites. The best you get from that is the threadbare "oh, we looked at places in the city but couldn't find a housue we liked." Instead, Detroit needs to do what Buick is doing and recruit elsewhere, the same way Buick can sell in China, where there is no emotional baggage of the 1970s U.S. auto industry.

Originally Posted by professorscott

Boy, this is an unusually simple one, at least IMHO.

1. The City's biggest problem, for decades now, is that it is losing residents and businesses to the suburbs. Most of the suburban communities have no local income tax; the city has one. So on this count, get rid of it.

2. Some people asked, well, if the City kills the income tax, how does it make up that supply of income? Answer: IT DOESN'T. The City has to restructure to be able to live within reasonable means, like everybody else on Earth. Bullshit to the scare tactics, like "we'll have to cut police! Booga booga!" Cut the ridiculous and overstuffed bureaucracy. Live like Dearborn or Royal Oak or Taylor lives.

So to sum it up: The city income tax is poison; GET RID OF IT.

**English** · August-08-10, 09:38 AM

Originally Posted by Huggybear

It's actually pretty entertaining to hear an argument like #1 below because it suggests this argument [[or arguments): "Detroit has been losing residents for years. Most of the suburban communities have [fewer minorities/drainage ditches instead of storm sewers/white-painted curbs/strip malls]. Therefore, Detroit should [be racist/dig up the storm drains/paint the curbs white/replace streetside retain with strip malls]." You're falling into the classic fallacy of fixating on one variable - a close cousin of the old "y happened after x; therefore, x caused why."

The first variable I would try to eliminate, before concluding that income taxes mean anything, is the social norm that was created in which "white people live in the suburbs and black people live in the city." Let's connect the dots.

1. World War II hauls hundreds of thousands of rural southern whites to a segregated Detroit.

2. Race riots occur in 1943.

3. World War II ends and baby boom commences. All of a sudden, Detroit is bursting at the seams, and 900 sq ft bungalows now house families of five or more.

4. The federal government begins subsidizing loans for GIs. Loans are in undeveloped suburban areas. The GIs are predominately white, basically everyone who was an able-bodied white men from 1942-1945. At the same time, banks are redlining non-whites.

5. The United States Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer, effectively ending the use of restrictive covenants that were used to keep Detroit segregated. Brown v. Board of Education follows, eliminating school segregation.

6. The federal and state governments begin building a massive infrastructure of interstate and state highways that allow the people who were able to buy houses in the suburbs to separate themselves from cities and get to more spacious suburban homes.

7. Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending [[at least on paper) most types of racial discrimination.

8. Detroit proceeds to lose one million people between 1952 [[peak population) and the 1970 census [[this entire period under white mayors). The 1967 riots did not, per stats released in 2007, cause any appreciable increase in depopulation.

9. The city continues to lose population through the 1980s, a period when both city government and the schools were still functional.

I combine this with my own experience, which was that the first I ever heard of the income tax was overhearing office workers bitching about being transferred downtown. Until then, among outgoing Detroit residents, it had been a discussion that centered around "safety," and "property values," both of which are proxies for you-know-what. From all of this, I have concluded that the city's downfall was due to some combination of [[1) small houses and lots and [[2) a pretty serious racial animosity, fueled by fear and enabled by subsidization, that changed social norms first among the white population and then the rest of the middle class. On the second point, I'll put it out there that people don't live in Detroit because they have a gut reaction against it that doesn't stop to ask whether the income tax is higher or not.

I think that if you sat down, did a survey, and plotted among Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y the elasticity of demand for living in Detroit, you would find that the cost of living reduction needed to induce an average person in this area to live and work in Detroit would be far greater than 2.5% of his or her income. I think you'd find that the reduced water and sewerage costs [[for a lot of people equal to the city tax) would be meaningless - as would the absolute-dollar reduction in property taxes. The difference, among people who due to age or circumstances are not in the market for public-school education, would represent the influence of the intangible "norm."

I think the single best piece of evidences that taxes have zero to do with the issue is that there were Enterprise and Renaissance zones left on the table during the Clinton and Bush administrations. These did not represent trivial, 2.5% changes in taxation. These were big cuts across multiple types of taxes, even for corporations and people who did not have kids in school [[eliminating that from the discussion of "why not"). But they never got near their potential. According to what has been postulated here about lower taxes meaning more investment, they should have been overrun.

The basic "white/middle class people don't live there" mentality is so toxic and internalized that you have at least one entire generation [[Generation Y and beyond) that sees cities [[well, at Detroit) as undesirable, that reflexively calls Detroit "the ghetto" and practices a type of studied financial illiteracy to make a monetary case [[or, more precisely, to justify that of their parents).

As long as all of this is going on, Detroit will be recruiting from outside the area and a small group of Gen X and Gen Y people who remembered what it was like when it was functional and are trying to get it back there. It some ways, it may be better to stop proselytizing suburbanites. The best you get from that is the threadbare "oh, we looked at places in the city but couldn't find a housue we liked." Instead, Detroit needs to do what Buick is doing and recruit elsewhere, the same way Buick can sell in China, where there is no emotional baggage of the 1970s U.S. auto industry.

What an awesome post, Huggybear. We could also try to recruit legal immigrants to move in. Here is one example I know of: My pastor and his wife are from London, were recruited by an Ann Arbor church, and let go due to the recession and offerings being down. So the couple began a new home church, but their heart is in Detroit. They have all kinds of ideas for things to do. This of course has caused the congregation, which primarily lives around Washtenaw County, to try to dissuade them. "Oh, no! If you move to Detroit, I won't be able to visit you!" That sort of thing.

I'd be willing to bet that kind of talk goes in among MANY suburbanites who encounter newcomers from outside of the area. It's so widespread until I sometimes run into foreigners who are shocked that a black woman from Detroit has a professional job. One guy from Scotland I met on the plane told me that he thought Detroiters either worked in fast food restaurants or sold drugs. Don't even get me started on the "no kids" thing... I try to take it in stride and not think about it, but if you pause and look at the assumptions, you just get angry.

**professorscott** · August-08-10, 10:10 AM

This thread is about the income tax so I focused on that, but in my most recent post I said it was about cost vs. the level of services, not just cost. I agree in general that a big city can't compete with its suburbs on purely a cost basis, but my point is that if the City isn't willing to be generally competitive: provide good schools, or good parks, or good public safety, or even maybe some amenities that suburbs tend to lack [[like excellent public transit), then it's ridiculous to be the high-cost provider.

What we have here is a situation where Detroit, compared to just about any of its suburbs you can name:
1. Has by far the highest tax burden
2. Has the worst quality of essential public services
3. Hasn't chosen to provide amenities to its residents that they can't get if they live in a suburb

You have to try to fix at least one of these in order to attract people and stop the bleeding. Okay, don't fix number 1; then fix 2 and 3. Especially 2. But the City government over the past sixty years, so far as I have been able to tell, hasn't made any effort; in fact, I'm not even aware of any discussions in that direction.

Now, I'd be thrilled to be wrong about this. But I don't think I'm wrong.

**mjs** · August-08-10, 11:04 AM

Originally Posted by Novine

"It's harder to compete for business and residents when neighboring communities have a 2.5% advantage."

Does it? I would say that it's harder to compete when the city has to shoulder most of the burden of supporting the majority of the poor and unemployable people in the region on a non-existent tax base. I can tell you that Dr. Docmo's Northville has no need to levy a local income tax because it's McMansions generate enough dollars in property taxes to provide the basic levels of services that residents in the suburbs need. Northville doesn't have to provide for the poor or the uneducated or the homeless. Northville doesn't have to provide anywhere near the level of police or fire services that Detroit has to muster.

If Northville had to share the cost and burden of providing those services, the discrepancy in tax rates between the two communities would be a lot less.

When did unemployment, welfare, and health and human services start coming from the city budget? These are funded at the Federal, State, and County levels. Northville has more police per capita than Detroit and why would you expect Northville's per capita costs for a fire department to be higher than Northville's? Northville may not be in the transit system, but many other suburbs are.

People already said what can replace the city income tax, a city sales tax. Chicago and New York do it. If you buy alot in the city, you obviously use the city alot so you can still tax outsiders by use. You think I was going to drive to the suburbs for lunch when I worked in the city? If suburbanites enjoy Hockeytown after an event, they help pay for the police and clean up. You really think people wouldn't work or live in the city over a sales tax? You really think Detroiters will drive to the suburbs for a loaf of bread or a happy meal?

In the end though, its like alot of posters have said, its all about value. High taxes require solid customer service. If Detroiters pay more in property taxes than Northvillites, they should have faster police response times. If there's too many criminals to do this, then Detroiters need to start electing tougher Judges and Prosecutors who will keep these jackoffs off the street and incarcerated longer on the County or State's dime.

**missn** · August-08-10, 12:40 PM

I am also not a low tax advocate, but if my office straddled the Detroit/Redford Twp. border, I'd fight for my desk to be on the Redford side of the building ...

**Hermod** · August-08-10, 02:00 PM

Originally Posted by mjs

People already said what can replace the city income tax, a city sales tax. Chicago and New York do it. If you buy alot in the city, you obviously use the city alot so you can still tax outsiders by use. You think I was going to drive to the suburbs for lunch when I worked in the city? If suburbanites enjoy Hockeytown after an event, they help pay for the police and clean up. You really think people wouldn't work or live in the city over a sales tax? You really think Detroiters will drive to the suburbs for a loaf of bread or a happy meal?

How much will a sales tax bring in with little or no retail in the city?. If Great Lakes Crossing was located where the Packard factory is located, you might get some sales tax income. On sales tax, you are like Captain Ahab, doomed before you set sail.

**Novine** · August-08-10, 02:12 PM

"People already said what can replace the city income tax, a city sales tax."

Except it can't because Detroit's not allowed to levy a city sales tax.

"When did unemployment, welfare, and health and human services start coming from the city budget?"

When things like unemployment and poverty affect the demand on city services. If there's correlation between the two, there should be no problem moving thousands of Detroit's poor to Northville as it would have no impact on the city's budget.

"Northville has more police per capita than Detroit and why would you expect Northville's per capita costs for a fire department to be higher than Northville's?"

Not true. Detroit has more officers per person and has to support a whole range of services that Northville does not. Northville doesn't even provide its own dispatch or lockup. Those are outsourced to Northville Township. The same is true on the fire side. I don't expect a place like Northville to have the same per-capita costs for those kinds of services. That's the point. A place like Northville can get by on far less in spending with no impact on its residents.

On the issue of tranist, name one community in SE Michigan that has anywhere near the same percentage of people dependent on public transportation as Detroit. Transit in most communities serves a small segment of the population, like seniors and the disabled. In Detroit, it's the only means of transportation for a significant percentage of the population.

**DetroitPlanner** · August-09-10, 08:28 AM

Originally Posted by Novine

"On the issue of tranist, name one community in SE Michigan that has anywhere near the same percentage of people dependent on public transportation as Detroit. Transit in most communities serves a small segment of the population, like seniors and the disabled. In Detroit, it's the only means of transportation for a significant percentage of the population.

One of the many reasons why having an RTA would make all the sense in the world. The RTA could coordinate the major lines where DDOT and SMART run duplacative service, allowing lower costs for both agencies.

**JJD** · August-09-10, 09:22 AM

Originally Posted by Novine

JJD - What services are you willing to give up for your tax cut?

1. City Council - Staff, aides, travel, conferences, etc.
2. DPS - sorry I am a product of the DPS and am proud of my education and past, but this is a fail. It is not funtionally educating the cities youth. Leave it to Charter and Private Schools
3. Corruption and nepetance - not really a service, but its where I feel a large portion of my taxes end up going.

I guess my question to you is what services do my taxes currently pay for? The only city service that I actively use are the police and the roads. I don't use the DPS, I pay for my trash service, They do not clean or maintain the neioghborhoods very well.