Fayetteville voters overwhelmingly approved the proposed change for HMR tax revenues, by a margin of 81% to 19%.  Mayor Jordan was quoted in today’s paper saying that “This will help us in our general fund.”  In the coming months, we’ll keep tabs on general fund spending and spending on park development.  As we have said before, changing the park development portion of the HMR tax was a tradeoff.  It meant that park development funds could be diverted to park maintenance, and as a result general fund revenues could be spent on other things.  Since Fayetteville’s politicians never spelled out what those tradeoffs specifically entailed, it will be interesting when we find out.

The ballot language was horribly misleading.  Taken at face value, it apppeared that one was either voting for park “development, construction and maintenance” or against park “development, construction and maintenance.”  In truth, the only choice being decided yesterday concerned ”maintenance.”  Intentionally misleading?  Almost certainly.  But, I expect it would have passed anyway.