PHENIX CITY, Ala. — The City of Phenix City has been burning cash at a staggering rate for nearly a decade, as new expansion efforts and sales tax raises confuse residents based on the city’s measurable economic failure.

According to financial data published by the city’s government, elected officials have decreased the city’s net position by a raw value of $12.4 million from 2013 to 2020; the most current year published on-record. 

However, that raw value must be adjusted by-year to reveal its true value in today’s dollars.

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When the data is normalized by today’s dollars through current financial data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) from August 2022, the true value of the city’s loss is revealed to be just over $23 million; a loss of 25.97% of every dollar it had over the eight-year period.

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The sheer scale of the loss of the taxpayers’ wealth by the city’s elected officials is nothing short of incomprehensibly abysmal. It also happens to coincide with the entire tenure of Mayor Eddie Lowe, who first took office in 2012; a lengthy ten-years-worth of financial losses  ago.

When put into financial terms, the net position of the City of Phenix City has produced a negative Combined Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of -4.2% per year from 2013 to 2020, adjusted for inflation in August 2022.

In simpler terms, the Phenix City government became 26% poorer from 2013 to 2020, losing twenty-six cents worth of real value from every dollar they had. 

Conversations in city council in recent months have made it plain that the city’s financial situation has continued to worsen since the timeframe of their most recently-published data. 

One of those conversations resulted in higher taxes on residents to make up for the city’s financial losses.

The council recently voted to raise local sales taxes on July 19, 2022, with council members openly stating the higher taxes are intended to make up for the city’s losses. The city is now tied for the fifth-highest sales tax jurisdiction in the nation, with residents set to pay an enormous 9.75% total sales tax within city limits.

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The city also recently changed the billing structure for public water and sewage, both decreasing the number of “free” gallons per month included within the base rate and increasing the cost per gallon for each gallon thereafter. The water rate increase raised many residents’ monthly bills by as much as 50% — a staggering increase during challenging economic times for many.

With so many financial increases being pushed onto residents, it raises questions about the city’s track record in stewarding their taxpayers’ dollars. As the nearly decade-long data trail reveals, the city’s coffers have lost twenty-six cents worth of purchasing power from every dollar they have collected. The city’s financial failure now burdens the citizens themselves, as the increases are intended to cover the losses of the city’s failed expansion efforts. 

Just this week, the city announced a re-vamp on their “new vision” for downtown development. This comes after the measurable failures of their previous attempts to revitalize the area, which is readily-observable in the data of the city’s eight-year financial decline. The investments made have simply not yielded positive financial results.

The city’s development initiatives have done little to improve the true quality of life for residents in the downtown area, despite the millions of taxpayers’ dollars spent. The area’s high crime rates continue to be a reality for families, in spite of the city’s eight-year development efforts to revitalize the neighborhood. 

The downtown area surrounding the new Whitewater Village complex has been the scene of several shootings this year, the latest of which occurred in front of the complex just over a month ago on July 28, 2022. Another occurred just one block away in front of the newly-built Marriott hotel on Whitewater Avenue, and another just three blocks away on the corner of 13th Street and Broad Street in front of the local KFC restaurant. The list goes on.

Phenix City residents can voice their opinions of the city’s loss of 26% of its wealth by contacting their city council members through the city’s website here.