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Seeking money for expanding programs in tough economic times, several Democratic City Council members are floating new taxes and tax hikes to pay for more police officers and affordable housing.

The potential taxes include: raising the sales tax; adding another $1 to the city's hotel bed tax; instituting a tax on apartment renters; and instituting a tax on money generated from advertising.

Council members involved — including Regina Romero, Rodney Glassman and Karin Uhlich — insist their talks of higher taxes are preliminary. But through interviews and requests the three have made of the city staff, it's clear they are serious about their intentions of hiking taxes.

Glassman asked the city's finance department for a detailed breakdown of how much money could be raised by hiking the sales tax 0.25 percent, 0.5 percent, 0.75 percent and a full 1 percent.

"We're looking at all the options," Glassman said of the taxes to fund affordable housing and potentially public safety. "We want to see how much money we could raise."

And the council's subcommittee on Children, Families and Seniors — which is made up of Romero, Glassman and Uhlich — has asked the staff to return with projected revenue to be gained from adding $1 to the city's hotel bed tax, instituting an advertising tax of between 2 percent and 3 percent and creating a rental tax of 0.5 percent or larger per month.

Some oppose tax hikes

At least two council members — Mayor Bob Walkup and Councilwoman Shirley Scott — said they question or oppose the potential tax increases. City Manager Mike Hein said a sales-tax increase may be needed to fund police and fire in the future, but he said it couldn't occur before 2010 or 2011, because the measure would have to go before voters.

Romero said the idea of tax hikes germinated out of talks about providing a revenue stream for the city's affordable housing trust fund. The current mix of funding — sales of city property, apartment-conversion fees, legal settlements and money left over from the low-income garbage-fee waiver — doesn't provide enough money, she said.

"It's not enough for the housing trust fund," Romero said, adding that the staff is "going to give us different options" on the taxes.

The ideas are so preliminary that Romero said she didn't know exactly what the taxes would look like other than a "probable" $1 hike in the bed tax and a "probable" tax on renters.

The rental tax would be a monthly fee of more than 0.5 percent on every $100 of rent paid, with Romero talking about a fee as high as 1.5 percent per $100. For the average rent in Tucson — $668 according to real estate research firm RealFacts Inc. — that would mean a fee of $6.68 a month if the tax were set at 1 percent.

Glassman said Tucson is the only city in the state that does not have a rental tax, which makes him especially interested in it. Romero said Tucson is the only city in the state that doesn't have a rental or advertising tax.

She couldn't say what activities the advertising tax would cover but said the tax could range between 2 percent and 3 percent.

It could be similar to the advertising tax in Marana, Romero said. But while Marana has an advertising tax in its city charter, it doesn't collect the tax, Marana officials said, because the Town Council has never voted to start collecting it.

If it did collect the tax, Marana's advertising tax would cover gross revenues from advertising, which would include money generated from billboards, direct mail, television, magazines and newspapers.

None of the options the subcommittee is looking at is out of the ordinary and all are used in cities throughout Arizona, Uhlich said. These ideas were raised by a city committee back in 2004 to fill the budget gap that year, but instead that council decided to hike the city's garbage pickup fee, she said.

"I can't tell you which I hear louder, 'no new taxes' or 'pave our streets,'" Uhlich said. "We can decide together whether we're happy with the status quo and the pace of investment in services. Or do we ask the public whether additional resources be raised to do better?"

Not everyone on the council shares the three council members' taxing enthusiasm.

Walkup — the council's lone Republican — opposes the ideas.

"This is not the year to do that," Walkup said. "It's way too soon to talk about other sources of revenue. Your first order of business should be looking at expenditures. Let's get ourselves through this year and see how we rebound."

Scott said she wanted more details but added, "I have a lot of questions about taxing people at this time. I think it would be a bit of a burden."

The council's ideas were received the worst by Mary Schuh of the Pima Association of Taxpayers, who called the council's ideas "appalling" and "shocking" given the current economic malaise.

"While you're down, we're going to kick you some more," Schuh said of the effect of the council's actions. "I can't think of the timing being worse."

What's more, Schuh said, the taxes will hurt those residents the affordable housing strategies are designed to help — people struggling with the cost of housing.

"These types of hidden taxes are the most aggressive against those who need affordable housing," Schuh said. "That would penalize the same people they want to protect.

Romero and Uhlich talked about raising taxes to help fund the city's 10-year budget-sustainability plan, which takes much of the projected growth in the general fund and earmarks it for city services such as police, fire, parks and road paving.

Having a separate sales-tax to fund public safety would free up money elsewhere, Romero said. "It would be a good idea to have a funding stream for public safety to relieve the general fund," she said.

Hein said he supports raising the sales tax for public safety but said "timing and scale is everything." He said there's no doubt another source of revenue is needed to fund public safety but added that voters will be asked several times in the coming years to approve sales-tax hikes and bond projects.

In addition, Hein said a consistent unified message needs to be presented to the public and "right now, me and the police union are walking down the yellow brick road" — referring to the bitter political fight between the union and City Hall over police pay.

Union President Larry Lopez said the union was willing to put its differences with Hein aside to campaign hard for the sales-tax increase.

"We need a dedicated funding source," Lopez said. "That's a huge thing to have. It's a necessity."