Provo’s city council recently approved a budget for the 2020 fiscal year. That budget will total about $254,000,000.

Divided among about 117,335 residents, this means that each resident’s share will be about $2,165/year (or $180/month), which is now slightly more than socialist-dominated Los Angeles spends per year per resident. However, Provo’s residents include a higher percentage of children than LA’s—and, considering that Provo’s average household size (in the U. S. census of 2010) was 3.24, this means that each Provoan household’s share of the city budget will be about $7,014/year (or $584/month).

And, if Provo’s budget were perfectly balanced, and if its taxes were levied only upon its own residents, then this would mean that each Provoan household would be paying an average of $584/month, as well. That’s more than some single Provoans spend each month on rent, even with Provo’s city council inflating local rental prices by restricting supply! Thankfully, Provo isn’t sending such huge bills every year to every household—but, even so, that’s a LOT of cash-flow!

Is your household truly getting $584/month in value from Provo city services? Perhaps we liberty-lovin’ Provoans should give a bit more scrutiny to where all of this spending has been going! (By the way, is are you a skilled liberty-lovin’ accountant who’d like to investigate this for us?)

Ideally, a city government (like any other government) should focus on rights-defense, and perhaps on some basic infrastructure like roads, but it shouldn’t be running either our economy or our lives, nor managing a vast array of business operations that are better left in the hands of private entrepreneurs. Sadly, Provo’s municipal government has increasingly engaged in the latter since 2001, as its city code has more than doubled, while Vision 2030/2050 is now guiding its city council toward ever-more centralized command-and-control. When Provo’s city council was seriously debating mandatory city-regulated landscaping for every Provoan home in 2016, this suggested (to some of us) that our fair city was in serious peril!

Such ongoing statist trends can only be thwarted through new leadership. So, if you want to keep Provo free and, therefore, both prosperous and progressing, then please involve yourself NOW to scrutinize this year’s candidates for city council and to actively promote any worthy ones that you can find!

References:

• Provo Daily Herald: Provo Municipal Council approves 2020 budget with top priority of police staffing (2019 Jun 19)
• Provo: Departments: Finance: Financial Reports
• Ballotpedia: Analysis of spending in America’s largest cities
• Free Provo: Solutions: Improving Our Electoral Options
• Facebook: Free Provo