Well, well, well. What do we have here but a Tucson City Council whose members’ ever increasing arrogance is showing no bounds even as the organization they’re elected to head fails to deliver on promises. Stunningly, though, instead of showing remorse — or at the very least trying to make amends — this council has the nerve to pass a $1.3 billion budget that increases and adds new taxes and fees to increase revenues by 7 percent.

Nice work, if you can get it.

But what kind of a city has businesses and residents who let these things happen?

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Clearly, renters knew how to rally for their cause after new City Manager Mike Letcher suggested they should pay a renters tax. Despite the fact that council members and other city officials had only days earlier suggested the tax was one of the few “done deals” in the proposed budget because other cities already have such a tax and Tucson was merely catching up on that score.

But it only took one public hearing for the idea to be back-burnered and even dropped. Hundreds of people rallied and railed at public hearings against the tax.

But on other issues, businesses sat on their hands and let the city add new taxes for phones and double the utility tax rate and increase the average water bill by 10 percent.

How much will all of that increase the overhead of businesses operating inside the city limits of Tucson? And the increases are going to hit in July, a month that for many Tucson businesses is traditionally the worst of the year. We can only imagine how bad July will be this year in the depths of an economic recession. But, by golly, our city will get more money.

There may be no more glaring example of hand-sitting than what the hospitality industry allowed the city to do. In a double switch, the city not only whacked the amount of money it’s going to send to the Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau to promote tourism and then hit tourists that come to the city with with another $1 per night surcharge on overnight stays.

The ludicrousness of this is the ignorance of city officials to the fact that this might backfire.

Consider that the taxes on an overnight stay at a resort outside the Tucson city limits could amount to more than 3 percent less than staying someplace inside the city limits. For larger groups and meeting planners that can mount up in a hurry. Such groups could easily choose to go to, say, the Westin La Paloma Resort and Spa or Loews Ventana Canyon, which will have lower tax rates than the JW Marriott at Starr Pass.

On top of the city losing the revenue of taxes from those stays, the visitors staying outside the city limits will likely go to shop and dine at locations near where they’re staying, also outside the city limits. Places like La Encantada and Casas Adobes Village will be the beneficiaries of that, not places within the city limits.

Not only will the city lose. Businesses will too.

Business leaders should remember this. To change the way city government rules, businesses will have change so their voices are heard.

At least the employees who may lose their jobs from your business have the satisfaction of knowing that if they rent, they won’t be paying a city tax.