What it means
When a Scottsdale local says “the Preserve tax,” they mean the sliver of every sale in the city that goes to buying and keeping the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. Strictly there have been three of them: a 0.2 percent sales tax voters approved in 1995, a 0.15 percent tax added in 2004 and a 0.15 percent replacement tax approved in 2024 as Prop 490, which took over when the first one expired. Nobody keeps them straight in conversation; the point of the phrase is that the mountains were bought with the voters’ own money, and the voters remember.
That memory is political. “They’re spending Preserve tax money on it” is the most dangerous sentence a Scottsdale council member can hear, which is why the charter now forbids exactly that without a public vote. The Preserve and the voters guide tells the whole story; this page is about the money.
Where you’ll meet it
On the city’s tax page, which breaks down the 1.70 percent city rate by purpose. In every debate about trailheads, rangers or a building in the Preserve. In the budget guide, where the dedicated taxes explain why only one penny of the city’s rate is general money. And at any trailhead sign that says the land is yours.
Where the word came from
The phrase was born with a campaign. In 1990 a dozen residents, Jane Rau among them, formed the McDowell Sonoran Land Trust to keep the mountains out of subdivisions, and in October 1994 the council established the Preserve on paper. Paper does not buy land. The Land Trust’s answer was “Save Our McDowells,” a drive for a dedicated sales tax, and on May 23, 1995 voters approved Proposition 400: 0.2 percent on taxable sales for 30 years, to be spent on Preserve acquisition and nothing else. It passed with about 64 percent, and “the Preserve tax” entered the language as a thing the city was proud of.
The second tax came because the first was too slow. Land prices in the northern desert were climbing faster than the pennies piled up, and much of the target was State Trust land that had to be won at public auction against developers. On May 18, 2004 voters approved Question 1, a further 0.15 percent for 30 years, and Question 2, authority to issue up to $500 million in bonds repaid from the tax, so the city could buy now and pay later. A 1998 boundary vote in between had widened the target to about 36,400 acres, roughly a third of the city.
The third tax is the newest and the most argued over. The 1995 tax was due to expire June 30, 2025. Rather than let the rate drop, the council referred Prop 490 to the November 2024 ballot: 0.15 percent for 30 years for parks and recreation, Preserve maintenance and protection, WestWorld and related police and fire. It passed with about 61 percent, and on July 1, 2025 the city rate fell from 1.75 to 1.70 percent, the first time the Preserve tax has ever bought something other than land.
What it is not
The Preserve tax is not a property tax; Scottsdale’s property tax is small and goes elsewhere. It is not the bed tax, which funds tourism. And it is not the Prop 420 charter amendment of 2018, which spent nothing and instead locked the money and the land against the council.
The fine print
By the city’s own breakdown, about 9 percent of its sales tax revenue now goes to Preserve land acquisition, the 2004 tax, and about 9 percent to parks and recreation under Prop 490, with nearly 18 percent to transportation and roughly 6 percent to public safety. Everything else, the 1.00 percent general penny, pays for police, fire, libraries and the rest of City Hall. For the arithmetic of how the state’s 5.6 percent and the county’s 0.7 percent stack on top, see sales tax and TPT.
What the money bought is the largest urban preserve in the country: more than 30,500 acres, more than 230 miles of trail, the Gateway Trailhead opened in 2009 and Brown’s Ranch in 2013. Much of it was State Trust land, held by the state for public schools and sold only at auction to the highest bidder at no less than appraised value; the Arizona Preserve Initiative let the city ask for parcels to be classified for conservation, but Scottsdale still had to outbid everyone, which is what the 2004 bonds were for. The Conservancy, the Land Trust under its 2005 name, supplies the volunteer stewards.
One gap: the 2004 tax’s sunset is stated only as “30 years,” which puts it around 2034, but the exact date depends on when collection began and the city’s public pages do not say. The buying is also nearly done: with the boundary almost filled, the argument has moved from acquisition to upkeep, which is the shift Prop 490 made official and the reason some longtime Preserve advocates opposed it as a dilution of the original promise.