Revenue Measure Takes Shape One Meeting before the Deadline, Focuses on Roads and Parks

 
I was very supportive of a single tax measure at $199 with a CPI inflator for 6 years  – $150 for road and bike path resurfacing and striping only and $49 for parks and recreational facility maintenance only. The key to my support was that there be assurances that the existing level of expenditures for each would not be reduced unless the City’s entire General Fund was reduced such as in a recession in which case the expenditures could be reduced by the same percentage drop.
 

 
Staff’s report suggested that the existing level of expenditures for roads and parks be maintained each year only as long as there was at least a 15% General Fund reserve that year. That did not come close to addressing my main concern which is that existing road and park expenditures could be easily siphoned of for employee compensation as has happened every time the City has raised a new tax in the past.. All new City Councils would have to do is give a big enough salary or benefit payment increase each year so that a reserve of 14.9% was established each year and they could avoid ponying up for the preexisting road and parks expenditures the public otherwise expected.
 

 
Will Arnold initially touched on the need to change the assurances provided to the public that existing expenditures on roads and parks could easily be subverted by just using the 15% General Reserve Fund threshold. But it was Robb Davis who hammered it home that the public absolutely needs concrete assurances than new taxes would not simply supplant existing expenditures. He insisted on language that truly protected these existing road and park expenditures from future cuts by specifying the existing expenditure levels be maintained in the future unless there is a General Fund drop due to recessionary pressures.
 

 
While I am generally supportive of the proposed taxes, I think the Council has made a HUGE political mistake by splitting it into two separate taxes. Having two separate taxes on the ballot makes it far too easy for a voter to simply say “I want my roads fixed but don’t care so much about the parks” (or vice versa) and simply vote only for one but not the other. I think this split vote scenario is far more likely that a voter saying, “It is just too much so I am no voting for neither”. If 2 similar measures (one for roads and one for parks is put on the ballot, I predict enough people would split vote that each measure would only get about 60% of the vote thus sending both to defeat because they did not meet the 2/3/threshold. required for a parcel tax passing.
 

 
Plus the logistics and efforts (and money) required to physically run two separate campaigns (one for each tax measure) is really overwhelming. It will require 2 separate campaign committees with two separate sets of periodic filings, two separate sets of accounting/bookkeeping, 2 different fundraising efforts to pay for 2 sets of signs, 2 different messages for mailings, etc. Both Robb Davis and Rochelle Swanson correctly stated there needed to be a community effort to step up and promote these tax measures but by putting two separate measures on the ballot they are inadvertently discouraging such citizen involvement and any citizen participation is going to be diluted toward supporting one measure or the other.
 

 
Brett Lee also suggested and the Council gave the nod for a parks tax length of 20 years (the proposed road tax only for 10 years) justifying it by saying we have a permanent library parcel tax of an inflator (which is now up to $105/year!) so he thinks the public will buy a longer parks tax because we will certainly will always have the need. But Brett fails to recognize that the Library Tax was passed in a different time and the voting electorate now is much more alienated by government and taxes in general. And citizens demand more government accountability which is not necessarily provided by a 20 year tax measure. Fortunately, the road tax is for a much shorter duration (10 years) but this may be far too long for the average citizen to be comfortable writing annual checks.
 

 
A final complaint I have about how these tax measure sausages were put together is that the list of acceptable expenditures under the road and parks measures is to broad. The Council wisely cut down on the list for the road parcel tax to just road and bike path resurfacing and striping which is what I suggested is what the public really wanted and could very easily and quickly be explained to voters.
 

 
But then Council added in traffic signals and signs and gutters, curbs, and sidewalks (fortunately, they left out bus stops). But I (and others) could still see huge amounts of moneys put into beautiful ADA accessible sidewalks with very specialized surfaces and street lights – like the recent work on 5th St and the corner of Poleline and Lillard in South Davis by the Safeway. All of these things are great if our basic street needs were being me but inclusion of these things as legitimate expenditures for road tax money could see huge amounts of the tax money gobbled up.
 

 
Or the City may decide these new tax monies could be used to beautify the Downtown-Richards Blvd under-crossing with “traffic signage” or completely re-signaling Richards and Olive due to the needs imposed by the big new Lincoln 40 development. Or start on a hugely expensive traffic light and signal replacement/upgrade program throughout town while still having bone-jarring potholes throughout our road and bike path system. All of these things may be nice but I think what the public really, really wants is to just keep our streets and bike paths paved and striped. Everything else should be superfluous until these basic needs are met. And I think voters would step up and fund these things if the message to them is clear.
 

 
The list of expenditures in the proposed parks tax is even worse and includes street lights and road medians and “public facilities” and non-Measure O open spaces and street tree maintenance among the myriad of acceptable uses. Again, all the public really wants is for their parks’ grass to be mowed and efficiently watered without waste (and maintained without chemicals), for the park trees and shrubs to be kept pruned to remove dead or diseased wood, and for the pools to be kept open and maintained. It is going to be really tough for whatever campaign committee is ultimately formed to get out clear messaging for this hodgepodge of other uses.
 

 
So as the current proposals are structured, I don’t think that a clear message and compelling case can be made to the public with sufficient clarity to ensure passage of the two separate proposed measures.
 

 
My recommendations for the Council are this:
 

 
1) Combine the parcel taxes into one measure with a max 10-year duration (6 years would be more likely to pass).
 
2) Make the list of acceptable uses for spending tax measure money much shorter and clearly laser-focused so there is no ambiguity as to what the public is getting for its money.
 
3) Make the language maintaining existing expenditures exceedingly clear so that current expenditures for the defined needs MUST be maintained except ONLY if the City’s General Fund otherwise drops – noting that the new tax money must always be spent on on the defined acceptable uses.
 
4) Of less importance, I’d make the inflator based on CPI instead of a fixed 2%. There is a high likelihood that inflation will raise its ugly head in a huge way in the near future and having a fixed inflator right now may be good because it is slightly higher than the inflation rate. But if inflation roars back into high single digits like we had in the 80s, our 2% inflator will be severely inadequate.
 
I am sure I am forgetting a few details but this is the gist of the minimum changes I think Council needs to do to ensure “yes” votes by the average Davisite.