The Redmond City Council and I urge you to reject Initiative 1033.

In the bottom left corner of your ballot you’ll discover the choice about Initiative 1033. It’s easy to overlook, but I ask you to make sure you find it and vote no.

Initiative 1033 hurts a vibrant community like Redmond. It takes away our local control and replaces it with a flawed, one-size-fits-all formula. The formula prevents Redmond from protecting our quality of life and punishes the city for our conservative fiscal policies.

For nearly 40 years Redmond has reinvested its extra money into capital improvements like roads, parks, and fire stations. This has helped makes us a great community with a wonderful quality of life, the highest credit rating and a low level of debt.

Instead of paying cash for capital improvements, as happens now, the city would likely need to take on debt to meet the challenges of new housing and job growth. The initiative undercuts our conservative financial planning and would require the city to ask you to approve special levies on a much more frequent basis just to maintain our basic services, much like schools do.

Redmond has escaped severe cuts in service thus far because we have been very careful with your tax dollars. Initiative 1033 will lead to a steady erosion of our community’s tax base, especially if we continue to manage your money well. For example, I continually challenge staff to find efficiencies in their work so the city’s cost of providing you service does not outstrip our existing revenues. We expend money carefully and use new economic growth and activity to refrain from raising taxes or taking frequent tax measures to voters. Initiative 1033 tells you what must be done with your tax dollars by people who do not live or work in Redmond.

As a mayor with a background in finance and management, my job is to be careful with your money and ensure you receive value back from the taxes you pay. No one likes paying taxes; however, Initiative 1033 goes too far and penalizes those communities which have proven to be good stewards of your money. It also deals another financial blow to state and local governments at the very time our economy is beginning to show signs of recovery.

I strongly encourage you to vote no on Initiative 1033.

John Marchione is the mayor of Redmond.