Fiscal Accountability

By David Arthur Glass

Making sure the tax payer and rate payer receive the best in services for the rates and taxes they pay.

Petaluma is a full service city and to provide those services it requires revenue. Revenue to the city comes in two ways. Fees for services and tax revenue. Both of these sources of revenue need to be efficient to assure the tax payer receives the greatest amount of service for the least possible cost.

In this election there is a tax measure on the ballot called Measure Q. That measure gives this and every city council that will follow a tax increase that is too high, too long, and too loose in terms of how the money can be spent.

Measure Q would raise Petaluma's sales tax from 8.25 percent to 9.25 percent. That would make us the highest sales tax rate in the county.

Measure Q has no restrictions on how this or future city council's can spend or waste your money. It is a general tax that will go into the general fund where all future city council's will have complete discretion to spend the money any way they wish.

There is the "empty" promise of a citizen oversight committee to overlook these funds.

The money plain and simple will be deposited into the general fund. This is the fund that pays pension obligations, city wages, and health and other benefits. All of these salaries and benefits are negotiated through collective bargaining and agreements reached in private and ratified in public. There will be little opportunity for an oversight committee to oversee salary increases which will increase our pension liability and require greater contributions to CalPers.

As one who spent much of my adult life working in the municipal financial markets I could not sign on to this general tax. It requires too much trust of government and in this case for too long.

When I say Measure Q tax increase is too long...you may ask how long is it? How about forever. Well of course in the future at public expense by public vote it could with a majority have an end put to it, but otherwise it is forever and that is too long.

The Rainier project is dependent upon highway 101 being raised lifted and widened. Most estimates place that time frame around 2020 but even if it is sooner their is time for the public to protect itself from uncontrolled expenditures and reject measure Q.

Voters should be given the opportunity to approve a restricted use tax that guarantees the tax payer receives what the tax payer is willing to pay to achieve. There is an overwhelming desire on the part of the public to have improved street conditions and traffic relief that includes a crosstown connector and freeway interchange at Rainier.