One more tax hike

Boy, we never saw this coming: The Las Vegas City Council on Wednesday approved $1.1 million in recreation fee increases, ostensibly a last-ditch measure to ensure adult and youth sports leagues can continue having access to public ball fields and facilities.

First, let’s call the council’s action what it really is: a tax increase. Yes, these tax increases are being paid by users of specific services. But they’re being imposed because of the city’s overall drop-off in tax collections, which support the Department of Leisure Services in addition to public safety and social services.

Second, as with every other kind of tax increase, it won’t bring in nearly the amount of money the city hopes to collect over the next year. Doubling the field-use fees paid by sports leagues and increasing the amount parents must pay for before-school and after-school care in the city’s Safekey program will inevitably reduce demand for these services. Google “price elasticity of demand” for more information on this basic concept of economics.

Finally, the city has little credibility with the public in selling this cash grab as a necessary step to preserve recreation programs, or in claiming in an analysis that “the proposed fee increase will still not be sufficient to pay for field upkeep and program support.”

The fundamental reason these tax increases were imposed is the city’s outlandish labor costs. Unionized park maintenance workers are paid salaries and benefits two to three times what private-sector landscapers earn — and their compensation keeps growing, regardless of the state of the economy, just like the paycheck of every other local government employee.

While city officials have taken steps to seek concessions from their public-sector unions, the city could also be outsourcing park maintenance to the private-sector landscape maintenance companies that do a better job — at a significantly lower cost — taking care of parks controlled by private homeowners associations around the valley. That would save a heck of a lot more than $1.1 million.