Raising the city's portion of property taxes won't get its first public hearing until next week, but the issue garnered much of the public comment at Wednesday's City Council meeting.

On Monday afternoon, the Finance Committee will take up the proposed tax hike — about $116 more a year on a house with a market value of $300,000 and an assessed taxable value one-third of that, or $100,000.

The Santa Fe County Republican Party has been running advertisements demanding that the council put the proposal to a ballot referendum.

But City Attorney Geno Zamora said the city charter does not allow referendums to decide matters involving the budget, appropriations of money and the "levy of taxes."

Four city councilors and Mayor David Coss already have said they support the increase — enough to pass it.

During the petitions-from-the-floor portion of Wednesday's council meeting, five people spoke against the tax increase and eight spoke in favor of it.

Gloria Mendoza warned the councilors that if they won't put the matter to the voters, she will do it herself.

"The people of Santa Fe are not going to be submissive to your proposal to raise property taxes," she said. "Starting Monday, I personally am going to have an election in the city of Santa Fe."

Mendoza said she would take her ballot box to various businesses, ask people to mark ballots on what they believe is the right thing to do and present the results to the councilors.

"If you don't care what the people think and you think that just having a public hearing for them and giving them one minute to speak their mind, if you think that's enough, you're nuts and you're out of here," she said.

Bruce Weatherby, president of the Northern New Mexico Central Labor Council, said he felt for Mendoza but disagreed with her.

"America for the last 30 years has been slowly pulled apart by this mantra of no tax, no improvement, no repairs of the things we have built up and that our parents and grandparents built," he said. "Our country is falling apart. Things are falling apart in Santa Fe as well because we're not able to provide the services, provide the day-to-day things that people need."

Fred Flatt, often a critic of the council, said the head of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at The University of New Mexico warned Santa Fe councilors in 2008 not to increase any budget more than 2 percent "because things are going to fall apart. So you guys raised the budget by 6 percent. What were you thinking?"

Carol Oppenheimer, a leader in the move to raise Santa Fe's minimum wage and the wife of the chairman of Coss' re-election committee, said the tax increase would mean about $2 a week more for the average homeowner and would be "in keeping with the spirit of the living wage."

Sheryl Bohlander, whose husband was chairman of the county Republican Party, said the increase would be closer to $6 a week. "Maybe property taxes should be increased," she said, "but why now when the recession has hit so many people?"

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.