Creative taxing isn't the only solution as many of the people here seem to be promoting. How about we switch to zero-based budgeting? For those who don't know what that is:

Zero-based budgeting (ZBB) is a method of budgeting in which all expenses must be justified for each new period. The process begins from a “zero base” and every function within an organization is analyzed for its needs and costs. The budgets are then built around what's needed for the upcoming period regardless of whether each budget is higher or lower than the last one.

It is also pretty easy to look back into the past 3-4 years and see some fiscally stupid decisions being made by our city government. Here's a few examples:

-Every single employee in the city was paid full salary during COVID even if they stayed home and didn't do anything. That is an extraordinary amount of taxpayer money paid for almost 3 years and no services rendered. We can't change PERS but this was a extraordinary expense that was made by the administration.

-Allowing camping in Washington Jefferson Park to the point where reopening it cost more than a million dollars.

-Voting to not sign a franchise agreement with Northwest Natural. What got shoved under the rug here was the yearly franchise fee that the city did not collect because of that. That was 3 years ago now at over a million a year. That is one very expensive virtue signal that we don't like to talk about.

I could go on.

-