Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the last two years Boulder County lost close to 10,000* jobs, half of them here in the city of Boulder. Job losses affect everyone even those of us still working. Unemployed people cannot afford to buy homes, cannot afford to buy goods and services, cannot afford to eat out, and so on. The lack of jobs leads to less economic activity for the whole city. This leads to less city sales tax revenue, revenue that Boulder needs to maintain city services and quality of life.
Some fear that aggressive business promotion leads us away from creating and maintaining the clean, healthy natural environment that Boulderites hold so dear. Nothing could be further from the truth. Business interests are not, and need not be incompatible with environmental interests. Without viable businesses we will not have the tax base necessary to implement the environmentally friendly initiatives that Boulder is known for. I will make every effort to bridge the gap between these two interest groups. I will work to make Boulder best town to locate environmentally friendly businesses in the country.
Boulder's City Council should be encouraging jobs creation not actively seeking to eliminate them. The city spent considerable tax monies on the "Jobs/Pop" study over the last two years. This rancorous debate divided the population into separate camps of disappointed people, and solved nothing. The very businesses that generate jobs for Boulder's citizens and fills city coffers with sales tax dollars, city fees, and property tax revenues were discouraged from growth, indeed this study suggested severe limits to job growth through “creative zoning.” No wonder so many businesses left Boulder altogether during this regrettable process.
What was the inevitable result of this exodus? Sales tax revenues are down nearly 12% from last year, and now the city's budget shortfall is enormous.
I will discourage revisiting this jobs/pop study. As I suggested during the last election, the “jobs/pop problem” seems to have sorted itself out, much to our detriment.
Job growth and retention also must mean jobs in the private sector. Government agencies provide thousands of jobs in Boulder, and that’s good, but they don’t directly produce revenue in taxes for the city, and that’s bad. Three out of the four largest employers in the city of Boulder are tax-exempt. These government agencies and non-profits employ hard-working Boulder folks, but these organizations don’t pay local taxes.
These enterprises and their employees use the same roads, the same parks, the same recreational facilities, and the same city services that you do. However, they do not contribute the same amount per capita to our tax base as a fully taxed business does. So, you and I must make up the difference in higher sales tax, higher property tax, and higher fees for government services, etc. In addition, local for profit business pays property taxes, licensing fees, and sales taxes to the city--some of this money provides grant monies for the aforementioned non-profit organizations.
*Previous number of job losses was stated at 33,000. This number was an error. US Bureau of Labor statistics removed Broomfield County from Boulder County statistics as of January 2003. New figure of 10,000 reflects the change in reporting area. We regret the error.
We need jobs to maintain a healthy environment.