Tucson Weekly: The Tax Lady Sings (June 11

Supervisorial Candidate Brenda Even's Latest Song Is Definitely Off-Key.
By Chris Limberis
AFTER INFLICTING pain on taxpayers and students for eight straight years as a member of the tax-and-spend Tucson Unified School District board, Brenda Even is screaming about...7 cents.
She cares. She feels the pain.
On a crusade to finally replace her dead husband, John, on the Pima County Board of Supervisors, Brenda Even stammered and hollered last week about the $742.5 million budget that Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry's proposed for 1998-99.
Currents To float this budget, a record for county and city spending, Huckelberry is seeking a 7-cent increase in the county's overall property tax rate. Make no mistake, Huckelberry likes to spend. But there's a reason for the proposed increase: capital spending authorized by voters in the 1997 bond election and subsequent operating and maintenance costs.
Property taxes, based on the new rate of $5.26, would be $526 for the owner of a $100,000 home. That's $7 more than if this year's rate remained. In other words, Even is agitated about 58 cents a month.
"Seven cents is 7 cents when you think about it in terms of what people are having to pay already," Even declared on The John C. Scott Show on KTKT radio last Friday.
Certainly, Even must attempt to appeal to taxpayers in the overwhelmingly Republican District 4, which covers Tucson's eastside and Green Valley. But her sudden anti-tax zeal does little to distinguish herself from Ray Carroll, the young Republican convert who took the seat she covets when John Even died last year after just four months in office. Carroll voted against the county's 6-cent increase in the tax rate last year. And Ken Marcus, the other challenger in the September 8 GOP primary, is a conservative accountant who preached the tax-cut sermon long before Even.
On the radio, Even said she found it "incredible that the amount we give is still not enough."
She should know.
The Tucson Unified School District spent $209.8 million the year Even joined its governing board. Eight years later, that budget has exploded to $309.6 million, a wild 47.5 percent increase for a district whose growth is not as rapid as others in the valley.
As she runs for the Board of Supervisors, Even says, "It seems to me there are a great number, at least in District 4, who are hard working, the basically hard-working class. And they don't have a lot of additional money to add for taxes.''
She also spoke of the plight of retirees, though she couldn't quite get a handle on the demographics.
"Also with regard to the retirement group that is in District 4, and there seems to be kind of a large contingent particularly when you think of Green Valley," Even said. "But also there are many up in the environs of Tucson as well and I'm thinking those people, many of them, are on a fixed income...so it's like the tax creep may overwhelm us."
But at TUSD, it was more like a tax leap--from 1990 to 1997, a 51 percent jump in gross tax rates for TUSD.
Taxes were a manageable $6.255 per $100 of assessed value in 1990. After homeowner's aid from a convoluted state formula, that translated to an annual TUSD bill $430.74 for the owner of a $100,000 home. The tax bill for a $100,000 home today is $644.
It was worse last year. The bill for the $100,000 home was almost $700.
But forget the $100,000 prototype house. Let's see what Even's term on the school board has done to her Woodland Avenue neighbors, the Tankersley family. At $332,913, the Tankersley property is worth $2,356 to TUSD.
Down the Tanque Verde Wash to the Tucson Country Club house of Even's big financial supporter, Jim Click, we go. The mega-car-dealer paid $1,792 for Even's schools.
Since Even has been on the TUSD board, taxpayers have suffered an increase in gross rates from $6.25 per $100 of assessed value to the high-water mark of $9.47 last year to $8.91 currently.
Even is avoiding The Weekly and was unresponsive to calls for this story. She hasn't always joined the votes to pass each budget, but she and her cronies are lock step when it comes to keeping the public in the dark.
They never bother to acknowledge the taxes they impose. Take their action last year when they took advantage of higher property values to cut the tax rate by 53 cents. Higher values allowed Even, her ally Gloria Copeland and The Rev. Joel Ireland to jack up the budget by $4 million. Claims of a tax cut were false: TUSD's levy--the amount pried from taxpayers--grew to $151 million, up from $146 million the previous year.
All of this was done at the preposterous hour of 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday, when parents and taxpayers were not likely to show up. Even wasn't entirely to blame for the ridiculous schedule. Board Member James Noel Christ helped force that meeting--and extra administrative expenses--by skipping out of a previous budget session to go fishing.
Supervisors, meanwhile, began hearings on Huckelberry's proposal on Tuesday. They're scheduled to adopt a final budget on August 4 and set tax rates on August 17.

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