Kudos to Richard Rubin for laying bare the strong built-in, bipartisan bias for a property tax hike among candidates for Charlotte city council.

“We will struggle next year. We will struggle mightily,” said at-large Republican Pat Mumford, who is seeking a third term.

District 3 Democrat Warren Turner — who doesn’t face a general-election opponent — puts it more bluntly.

“It’s totally inevitable,” he said. “We can’t keep up. We just can’t keep up. The question is: How are we going to do it? How much?”

We can’t keep up. No, no you cannot if you insist on constantly expanding the scope of things the city spends money on. We said it last spring during the budget debate, and we say it again — There are millions of dollars in Charlotte general fund spending that could be cut.

And more importantly current revenue trends are nothing but up, providing plenty of funding without a property tax rate hike:

The city’s property tax take will grow from $186.5 in 2002 to an estimated $251 million in 2007. That’s 25 percent growth in just five years. The other primary source of revenue for the city general fund, the sales tax, shows even an even stronger upward trend. The sales tax raised $33.4 in 2002 and is projected to reach $49.7 in 2007, a 42 percent increase.

And in fact, the very latest projections for 2007 show the city taking in $268 million in just property tax revenues alone. Overall, all general fund revenues will total $425 million up from $372 million waaay back in 2004. There is just no way the city of Charlotte is starved for cash.

Where’s it going? Lotsa odd places, like $400,000 for a basketball tourney, but employee merit pay will zoom from $2,791 in 2004 to $7.7 million in 2006 and $7.2 million in 2007. The catch-all “Fees-Other” will claim another $10 million and has grown over 20 percent in two years. The city manager alone plans to spend $10 million on, well, the city manager’s office. And so on.

In sum, any candidate — or elected official come next year — who claims that Charlotte must raise taxes is just not willing to look at the numbers and say no to something. Anything, really.