Anyone support raising taxes at the local level to maintain services?

tall model looking girl: Anyone support raising taxes at the local level to maintain services?
The county I live in is facing a huge budget crisis due to falling home values and lower sales tax revenue. They want us to allow them to raise the tax rate so they do not have to cut back funding to: schools, parks, libraries, fire, human services, and other front line local services.

If this was happening to your home town would you recomend that they raise taxes or cut back on these local services?
The waste and fraud have been cut out in the last few tough years. There is now only meat. Your choice is one or the other. New taxes or service cutbacks.

Answers and Views:

Answer by SmartA$ $
I would recommend they cut the waste in those services and mostly I would recommend they cut other nonessential services.

Answer by wartz
There are only two choices, pay more taxes or cut services. The previous poster recommends cutting non-essential services and waste. Unfortunately waste and non-essential services are not items that are budgeted expenses. In my county schools, law enforcement and fire protection are the major government expenses and are the only places where there is anything significant left to cut.

Answer by PPwallawalla
The first problem is that there are so many different forms of taxation that it creates a lot of room for stealing and lies. The second problem is the idea of a ‘budget’. What a budget means is say you make a 100 dollars and you budget to spend 10 dollars, we still have 90 dollars remaining right? Nobody hears what happens to that money though. My solution is we change all taxation to sales tax. Most people spend like (insert ethnic stereotype here) and that is a poor way to live. Set the sales tax at 25% for everyone and everything in the US and there will no longer be an IRS (a huge organization), there will no longer be tax evasion, there will no longer be tax refunds because you cannot be over taxed and people in the middle class may begin to really save money.
I believe that our general education system in the US needs to be changed greatly. You are what you eat and if you feed your brain mediocrity and laziness then you will become that without doubt. Students should be trialed in every way, pressured to excel and taught to DO IT NOW. Students float through school, we need much more funding for education.

Answer by Judy
Reluctantly, I’d support a tax increase for those services if tax revenues have declined.

Where I live (PA), the voters don’t decide on most of those – the county commissioners, school boards, and local officials are empowered to set the tax rates without voter approval. That takes care of most of your list, except for the many areas that have volunteer fire departments, and libraries – local tax bodies aren’t required to contribute to those although many do.