Having a sunset clause in tax measures is the only way taxpayers have to force elected officials to focus on accomplishing intended projects within an agreed period of time and at a certain cost.
Our local city officials already have said why this project needs to be started and why it needs to be done:
It is a federally mandated project.
I think voters understand those reasons.
Lacking Explanation
What the city has not explained is why Measure CW has to be open-ended, without a firm closing date, or why our local seniors will only receive a 50 percent exemption instead of their usual 100 percent.
Also, it is unclear why their $40,000 in paid taxes are so absolutely essential for this project to succeed!
In the past, if my memory serves me right, all previous local parcel taxes and general obligation bonds passed by this community have had clear time limits.
For some reason, Measure CW doesn’t. That means it could go on forever. By not having a set time limit, it denies future voters/taxpayers an established date on whether to continue this tax.
Doling Out Dollars
By not having an ending date, it will be as if we taxpayers will be giving city officials an unknown amount of money, doled out $2M at a time, until the project is done.
So what will the City Council do with this tax money?
Proponents say it will be spent on cleaning up our local runoff.
If you were to take the time and had the patience to read beyond the well-crafted ballot summation and read all the way through the city’s proclamation, you would find on page 4:
C. Accordingly, the Parcel Tax is levied under this Chapter pursuant to the City’s Charter, Government Code Section 50075 et seq., and other applicable laws. It is hereby expressly provided that, as an exercise of municipal affairs powers, the City shall be authorized to use all or a portion of the tax allocated for capital improvements to pay installments of principal and interest on bonded indebtedness or with respect to leases, or similar instruments for the purposes of providing financing for any capital improvements hereunder.
As you can see, Measure CW would be giving the City Council the right to put our small community deeper in debt without an actual direct vote of the people on said debt. They could use this $2M, not to directly pay for cleaning up our watershed and storm runoff — as staff implies — but to use it for paying the interest and principal on an undisclosed amount of debt or without saying how long we would be paying for it.
Precedent-Setting
In writing this parcel tax measure, the city is asking to put the cart before the horse. The City Council is asking to borrow money without actually telling voters how much it is going to borrow. If Measure CW is not defeated, it will give our Council the unprecedented right to put this community deeper in debt without a direct vote of the people.
The unlimited timeframe of Measure CW should be a red flag warning to all taxpayers.
Switching Tactics
In the past, our City Council would have announced that the city needed to borrow $125M and that it would cost taxpayers “X” amount over a certain number of years to pay off.
But local voters just passed a $106M school bond a couple of years ago. So City Council members figured that local taxpayers were not going to want to see another mega, multi-million dollar measure on the ballot. Instead, they chose to ask for the relatively smaller amount of only $2M.
How Much? How Long?
How much could the city borrow with this $2M? It would, of course, depend on the timing of the bond market’s percentage rate and the length of the loan. At 2.5 percent interest for 30 years, the city could borrow slightly over $40M. That os less than a third of the cost of the city’s $125M estimated taxpayers’ cost. Down the road, local taxpayers can expect to be staring at two more tax proposals like Measure CW and then, after it is in place, also paying another $4M annual cost to maintain it.
Free Money
There are only so many grants and matching funds out there. And there are 88 other cities in L.A. County facing the same federal deadlines and fines that we are. No doubt these other cities will be competing with us for the same limited outside funding.
The local taxpayers’ cost for this project is estimated to be $125M. That does not include the 30 percent to 40 percent of outside funding the city anticipates receiving. The actual cost to local taxpayers could well be over $125M.
Taxpayers must remember that there will be stiff competition among the other county municipalities for this outside funding. And the estimated 30 percent to 40 percent missed out by our city will have to be made up by local taxpayers.
Fiscal Fantasy
This begs the question, where did city staff’s 30 percent to 40 percent outside funding figure come from? Is there a track record? Have we ever, as a city, received that much outside funding for a mega-million-dollar project? I don’t think so. Was this figure pulled out of thin air? Is it wishful thinking on the city’s part to make the taxpayers’ cost ($125M) of the project look smaller?
They cannot tell us how long or how much taxpayers will pay for Measure CW because they don’t know how much outside funding they will receive. Their cost estimates begin to look more like a fantasy plan to help gain voter approval.
Again, voters/taxpayers should not forget that any shortfall in outside funding would have to be paid for by local taxpayers.
As environmentally sound as it would be to clean up our storm runoff, Measure CW is too flawed to pass. It has too many time and fiscal unknowns, along with setting too many bad local precedents.
The next time the city puts forth another measure to clean our watershed, it will have to be more up front and candid with the community on the actual costs and the timeframe in paying for it.
Vote NO on Measure CW.
Mr. Laase may be contacted at GMLaase@aol.com