Oh, No! It's (tax) hiking season, so hang on to your wallet

It's early February, and that means just one thing in Virginia Beach: It's time to prepare folks for tax hikes.

Trouble is, taxpayers are a grumpy bunch. Especially in this stagnant economy. If city honchos want to squeeze more money out of the working schlumps, it's going to take a lot of work.

One way to prepare the unwashed is to start yapping about staggering "deficits" early in the process. Never mind that a future budget can't actually have a deficit and that what the Resort City is really faced with is a projected $90 million gap between what leaders want to spend and what they're likely to have on hand. Use the word "deficit" often enough, and even the newspaper may start to repeat it.

There's a lot at stake. If the officials can't get the hoi polloi to cooperate, there will be spending cuts. Shoot, the tassel-loafer crowd could be evicted from their office space at Town Center and moved somewhere like the dumpy city treasurer's office on 19th Street.

Chilling, I know. So it's time for those in charge to pull out all the stops.

One of the most effective tools the city uses each year is to threaten education.

This year, educators have been told to find about $40 million in savings. The public got a startling look at what that might mean Tuesday.

Just the sort of drama that gets tax hikes approved.

Another, somewhat less effective technique, is to warn of dire deterioration of the Beach's "quality of life."

Of course, quality of life deteriorates for families when taxes go up - but it's become fashionable in some circles to ridicule such people who worry about their personal standard of living by calling them "selfish," "tea party types" and "boo birds."

But wait one minute.

Looks like someone is trying to mess with budget choreography. According to a Beacon piece by reporter Mike Hixenbaugh, Councilman John Moss wants the council to order City Manager Jim Spore not to propose higher taxes, even before the bean counters put their finishing touches on next year's spending plan.

Moss said he's prepared to introduce a resolution to that effect this month.

Is he nuts?

It's almost as if Moss believes the city staff works for the council and not the other way around.

This radical approach to city government will not win friends on the City Council, and only two other councilmen say they're prepared to support the resolution.

Look for lots of behind-the-scenes efforts to keep Moss' measure from ever coming to a vote.

In fact, they've started. According to Hixenbaugh, the mayor compared Moss' idea to a no-tax pledge, like the ones many national politicians have taken.

Nice try, your honor. But telling your city manager that this is no time to hike taxes is not the same as pledging never to do so.

In the past two years, Spore has prepared budgets that called for real estate rate hikes and fee increases. The council nixed higher rates but agreed to higher fees.

"Let's save the manager some time this year," Moss said. "Let's tell him to bring us a budget with no tax or fee increases if that's what we want."

Frankly, this is something the council should have been doing all along.

It's called leadership, and it's been sorely lacking on the Virginia Beach City Council for years.

Kerry Dougherty,757-446-2306, kerry.dougherty@cox.net, PilotOnline.com/dougherty