By Marty Richman
In case you missed it on Monday, July 17, the Hollister City
Council voted unanimously to declare an emergency and place a
proposed 5-year, 1 percent sales tax increase
– to 8.25 percent total – on the November 2007 election ballot.
If more than half of the voters approve, the tax will become law
and transfer $3.5 to $4 million dollars annually from your
discretionary income to the city’s coffers.
In case you missed it on Monday, July 17, the Hollister City Council voted unanimously to declare an emergency and place a proposed 5-year, 1 percent sales tax increase – to 8.25 percent total – on the November 2007 election ballot. If more than half of the voters approve, the tax will become law and transfer $3.5 to $4 million dollars annually from your discretionary income to the city’s coffers.
I’m of two minds concerning the sales tax hike – fear and loathing. Seriously, I don’t expect to get something for nothing from government. Services must be funded.
On the other hand, I always want to get my money’s worth, and therein is the rub. My left brain supports the tax increase while my right brain opposes it. I flipped a coin to determine how I’d vote in November and it landed on edge reflecting my feelings perfectly.
There is no doubt that the city needs money; however, I’m not convinced they will spend it wisely.
Unfortunately, if the lack of public input is any indicator, there is little reason to believe that the majority of taxpayers care one way or the other – that is, they care not until after the election. Then they may face a fait accompli and loss of their bargaining power (fait accompli is a French expression which loosely translates as – “Honey, look what we bought!”).
So, if you really want to change the way the city spends your money, now is the time to bring the pressure to bear while you still have something to bargain with – your vote.
To justify the declaration of emergency, the city put together a fat package detailing its financial woes. Some of it made sense and some of it was pure nonsense.
The primary justifications were personnel cuts in the police department and reduced fire protection, but it was also noted that the city had to close the water feature at Valley View Park. In the immortal words of the TV’s insurance-hawking caveman, “Huh?”
Those seeking thrift could not have been encouraged when the city repeatedly lamented that they had reduced staff by 24 percent, yet could not immediately respond when asked what this represented as a reduction of actual personnel costs. Those figures weren’t immediately available.
This not about body count. This is all about money, is it not?
The one thing they should have put in, they left out – the continued poor economic performance of San Benito County and Hollister compared with Santa Clara County and San Jose. Yet the council keeps insisting that we hire and compensate our city employees the same way those “big dogs” do.
It’s time to find another solution.
The basic truth is that when the city government was flush officials made bad economic decisions and delayed meeting their sewer obligation until they were forced to by a moratorium. Now they have burned through the $11 million of General Fund reserve. Their coordinated cry of, “better times are coming, just 5 years down the road” rings hollow because bloated personnel costs also take years to remedy – provided you start sometime.
Before deciding how to cast your vote, there are some things you should understand.
The first is that five years is a long time. If your children are in the ninth grade when the tax kicks in, they will be college sophomores before the ordinance expires.
The second is that the Citizen’s Oversight Committee has no specified power; all they can do is report how the money was spent. That’s public information in any case.
The ordinance states that the funds can be used for “any legal municipal purpose.” That covers a panoply of sins.
If you care about how the money would be spent, now is the time to contact your council member and express your opinion. I believe emergency funding should not be used for cost-of-living raises (Note: we are already paying for large increases in medical insurance premiums, retirement benefits, and to offset CALPERS’ stock market losses, and those are raises).
Nor should it be used for travel, running the water feature at Valley View Park, or any other non-emergency expenses that routinely drain the budget. Emergency funds should be used only for emergency purposes on a strict priority basis, not to do business as usual.
As for me, I’m still flipping the coin. Shall we go for two out of three or three out of five?
Marty Richman is a Hollister resident.
