Why does Mayor Berkowitz and company have to tell bald face lies to thwart this initiative? In this story he says "If the city needed less money one year, say for snow removal, and that money wasn’t otherwise spent, the city would have that much less the next year, tying the hands of city budget planners". Taxes are collected based on the Municipal budget, NOT  on what is actually spent. If they spend less on snow removal it has no effect on the amount of taxes collected, only on the amount of revenue spent.  They will have a budget surplus but that does not affect either the taxes collected or the tax cap calculation.