Revenues:
$247 million — Annual Property Taxes
$100 million — Annual Sales Taxes
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$347 million – Total Annual Property Taxes and Sales Taxes
Expenditures:
$238.4 million — Memphis Police Department Budget
$160.8 million — Memphis Fire Department Budget
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$399.2 million — Total Public Safety Budget
In other words, all – every dollar – of Memphis property taxes and sales taxes do not cover costs of police and fire divisions. More to the point, it falls short by $52 million. It is little wonder that the other city services and programs are underfunded.
I’d suggest we privatize both police and fire, or at least fire.
This should serve as an eye opener for those who say “we should never ever touch public safety (police and fire) as that will put lives at risk” when the lion’s share of our tax dollars goes towards funding the two departments alone. The $47.7 million left over to fund all the remaining departments is not nearly enough to address the other issues facing the city of Memphis when it comes to blight, re-paving roads, keeping libraries and community centers open, etc., yet people insist we make more cuts to non-emergency services and personnel, freeze all economic development efforts, and/or raise taxes, which are already the highest in both Tennessee and in our region.
When you compare those numbers to Knoxville (48% of its tax revenues are spent on public safety), Nashville (22% is spent on public safety; 37% when you separate education spending from their entire budget), and Chattanooga (47% is spent on public safety), it is not only imbalanced, but unsustainable.
Here are links to those budgets in comparison:
Nashville:
http://www.nashville.gov/Portals/0/SiteContent/MayorsOffice/140430_FY15BudgetPresentation.pdf
Knoxville:
http://www.cityofknoxville.org/budget/2014/20142015budgetsummary.pdf
Chattanooga:
http://chattanoogan.com/Breaking-news/budgetsummary.pdf
Sorry for the math error in the earlier version of this post. I should not try to add at 1 a.m. in the morning.
Thanks for the correction, and it should bother people that the bulk of their tax money, if not all of it, is being used solely for public safety and nothing else. Now you have some calling for a half-cent sales tax increase that would only go towards paying for police and fire benefits, but not for early education, workforce training, or other essential needs for the city of Memphis. I don’t know of any other major city that has such a lopsided operating budget that Memphis does, but there has to be a right balance when it comes to priorities here, and you simply can’t put all of your eggs into one basket.