Thanks a lot for all your advice! I looked around Craigslist and ended up finding an astronomy enthusiast who was upgrading his gear and gave me a great deal. I purchased a Sky Watcher Heritage 130 Tabletop Dobsonian, SVBONY SV225 Alt-Azimuth Mount, and a SLIK PRO 700 DX AMT tripod for about $208. The MSRP with tax is easily triple that! The equipment was in great in shape and I could easily see some of the brighter stars in a Bortle 8/9 sky relatively easily. I plan to purchase a couple of light filtering eyepieces for seeing the sun and moon to complete the setup.