Not Quite Over For The Political Junkies
by Chuck Ring
For those who are political junkies or just feel like a junk heap after the election, here’s something you can play with to see trends and results statewide and countywide.
After you arrive at the page you will see that you are on the results page for Santa Fe County. If you wish to dig down to individual precincts you will find a precinct select window next to the county window in the upper left corner of the page. Of course you can also select another county to examine if you want to spend all day and night on the site.
In Santa Fe County precincts 15, 16, 18, 73, 84 and 85 the transit tax was voted down. The total vote was 2755 against to 1515 for, which seems to verify that most folks in those precincts (which is mostly Edgewood do not see a train track or any other real overall transportation benefit to the citizens in our future. But, the bad news is that the rest of the Santa Fe County portion of transit district citizens felt differently and voted for the tax, so that the totals were 34934 for to 28,501 opposed.
So, what will happen as a result of the transit tax passing? On January 1, 2009, you will see the gross receipts tax for the incorporated area of Edgewood (inside Santa Fe County) rise from 7.625 to 7.750. This tax, joins other taxes that have been foisted on us because we cannot overcome the votes from the rest of the county when it comes to tax referendums. One answer to the perpetual problem is the possibility of forming a county out of portions of Santa Fe, Bernalillo and perhaps Torrance counties. This is not the first time that this possibility has been mentioned, but it might be more viable now, because it is difficult to walk much less run, with Santa Fe County’s hand in our back pocket.
It could be worse. Santa Fe City joins Española, and Taos to have gross receipts tax rates above eight cents on the dollar.