New revenue sources must be found for the future, or the County will not be able to meet its mandated roles in public safety and human services. Accordingly, in order to keep County services at the level most taxpayers want and expect, I support either the current call for a cigarette tax, or the Public Safety Sales Tax Referendum. Either of these revenue sources would allow the County to move forward without further service cuts. However, this is a choice for the people of the County to make, and should not be mandated by either the County Board or the State Legislature.

If neither of these revenue sources come to fruition, it has always been my position that ‘user fees’ are the preferable way to pay for County services. The person who uses the service, should also pay the costs associated with providing that service.

State law dictates how much we can charge for county services. However, many of these user fees have not been increased for 10+ years, so we must now also use property tax dollars to continue providing these services. If the County must continue providing these services, the state legislature must allow the County to increase the fees that pay for these services; otherwise the state should allow us to discontinue the service. It is not fair that everyone pay for the special services only a few residents use.

When asked if he would support a vehicle registration fee for county residents, Jim responded...

No! The city sticker idea is costly, archaic, impossible to enforce and would end up hurting many of the people the extra funds are supposed to help. All in all it is a wholly bad idea!

The cost of the program would be several million dollars just to implement. You have to pay for the cost of the stickers, the extensive number off staff needed to sell the stickers, the mailing of the forms out to people, the mailing of the stickers back to the people, and / or the outlets that would sell the stickers. In addition, the city stickers can not be deducted from your federal income tax (property tax can be deducted).

It is also difficult, and nearly impossible to enforce. Will the police department in Aurora write a ticket for failure to have a county sticker? Can they? Why would they? Who would prosecute the ticket even if they wrote it? Finally, the Sheriff’s office does not have anywhere near the manpower needed to enforce the sticker across the county.

Much of the increased funds from a sticker are supposed to be used to help people who are on a limited income. Yet the sticker will also cost these same people $50 that they most likely can’t afford. A large percentage of these people will therefore not be able to purchase the sticker. A percentage of them will eventually get a traffic ticket for not having a sticker. So the person on a limited income, who couldn’t afford the sticker in the first place, must now not only pay for the ticket, but also the original sticker they couldn’t afford.

Finally, a percentage of these people will be unable to pay for the ticket, so they will eventually have their licenses suspended. This will cancel their insurance. Then the uninsured, suspended driver (who still doesn’t have a sticker) gets in an accident with you. So the person who couldn’t afford the sticker now ends up in jail (costing you money to house then in jail), and you end up paying higher premiums on your insurance because your insurance company had to pay for the damages. In the end, everyone looses.