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Three East Bay cities are asking voters to approve sales tax increases on the Nov. 2 General Election ballot to help reduce municipal budget deficits at the same time San Mateo County supervisors failed to get enough votes for a sales tax increase of their own.
The sales tax in Alameda County now stands at 9.75 percent, the highest in the state.
The Concord and Antioch city councils each unanimously passed resolutions Tuesday night to place proposals on the November ballot that would increase sales taxes by .5 percent as a way to close their budget deficits. If a majority of voters in each city support the measures, the sales tax in each city would be raised to 9.75 percent, or an additional 50 cents for every $100 of taxable purchases.
Items such as groceries, prescription medications and utility bills would not be subject to the tax, according to Concord City Manager Dan Keen.
Antioch’s tax would expire in eight years and Concord’s in five years. Both require a majority plus one vote to pass.
On July 19, the El Cerrito City Council also passed a similar resolution. El Cerrito’s tax, which would expire in seven years, would bring that city’s sales tax to 10 percent, the highest sales tax in Contra Costa County.
Shoppers in Pinole, Richmond and El Cerrito already pay 9.75 percent, according to the California Board of Equalization. As of April 1, all other cities in Contra Costa County now pay 9.25 percent.
In all three cities, the new tax would be used to fill existing budget deficits so that the cities could maintain their current service levels. The tax would not be used for special projects and would be subject to scrutiny from citizens’ oversight committees.
Perhaps most importantly, the tax would stay in each city where it was imposed. The state would not be able to take any of it. According to Concord City Councilman Mark Peterson, the state has taken $33 million from Concord alone in the past decade, and the city has reduced its staff by 25 percent.
All three cities have said they have made all the budget cuts they can. If voters don’t approve the new taxes, the city councils will have to start reducing their police forces.
But also Tuesday, the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors voted not to put a sales tax measure on the November ballot. The proposed quarter-cent increase would have generated $30 million annually for the county, but a plan to put it on the ballot only got the support of two of the five supervisors, spokesman Marshall Wilson said.
The county is looking at a budget deficit of more than $100 million for the next fiscal year, Wilson said.
The county’s sales tax rate is 9.25 percent with the exception of the city of San Mateo, which has a 9.5 percent tax for retail transactions, according to Wilson.
The three supervisors who voted against the plan said the county could make additional cuts before asking for the help of voters, who are dealing with the bad economic climate, and that recently enacted bridge toll hikes should help, Wilson said.
The two supervisors in favor of the plan, Board President Richard Gordon and Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson, argued that this is “precisely the time” to ask for a tax increase because “people in need come to the county for help, and we need to be able to have funds to provide them with that assistance,” Wilson said.
All of the supervisors agreed, though, that it would be a struggle to mount a successful campaign so close to the November election, he said.
Wilson said the county has never asked voters for a general sales tax measure. He said supervisors discussed possibly proposing the measure again in 2012.
Bay City News contributed to this report.
Bay City News contributed to this report.
From Jim’s NYT link:
“Over most of that (past three decades) period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. ****The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.”****
“Since 1980, median real household income has risen less than 15 percent. ****The only period of strong middle-class income growth during this time came in the mid- and late 1990s, which by coincidence was also the one time when taxes on the affluent were rising.****
For most of the last three decades, ****tax rates for the wealthy have been falling, while their pretax pay has been rising rapidly.**** Real incomes at the 99.99th percentile have jumped more than 300 percent since 1980. At the 99th percentile — about $300,000 today — real pay has roughly doubled.
The laissez-faire revolution that Mr. Reagan started did not cause these trends. But its policies — ****tax cuts, light regulation, a patchwork safety net — have contributed to them.****”
Juan,
Thank you, hang in there, you are 100% correct, and I am with you 100%.
Juan wrote: “Laws…apparently are not necessary for Obama and his Admin to follow, however.”
And that’s why those who distract themselves with left vs. right politics are doing our country no favors. The Bush administration has also flaunted the law, most recently a court ruled in favor of the rights of US Citizens in the case of Bush’s wiretapping without court authorization. While the oligarchs are breaking the laws, Pleasanton Mom keeps reposting articles from AmericanThinker.com.
Stacey is right. Look how both parties embraced the “too big to fail” doctrine, and still have done nothing to prevent it from happening again. Whoever said that Bush “went along with the Dems” and supported TARP had it half right. Bush didn’t just go along with the Dems, he invented TARP in the first place. His administration dreamed it up and pushed it through congress. Henry Paulson’s most recent job before joining the Bush Administration was CEO of Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs got a substantial bailout and also was able to sell much of its toxic bonds to AIG at face value using bailout money. Obama now has Tim Geithner to continue the doctrine. That crowd stays rich and we all pay the price.
Juan – one point to observe, and Michael Medved I think makes it well here http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2010/03/31/obama_outright_evil,_or_simply_wrong?page=full&comments=true , is that you could be right, but you could be wrong, and average Americans, whom we need on our side to take America in a better direction, tend to get scared off by strong rhetoric.
Moveon and the hard left know it isn’t going to do them any good, with a majority in both houses of Congress and with the White House, to go out and protest the Afghan war. It is going to hurt their cause to push for single payer health care between now and November. We have to strategize and work on the message, because you know they are. That doesn’t mean we have to move to the center, btw.
PM speaks the truth when she says liberalism destroys everything it touches! Take, for example, slavery–what a blow to conservatives abolition was! And look how it affected the economy of the entire southern region!
Other liberal disasters: the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, womens’ sufferage, Brown v the Board of Education, Medicare, Social Security–the list goes on and on!
I, for one, thank God (who blesses conservatives liberally) for upstanding conservative heroes of America, like Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, George Wallace, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, Governor Faubus, Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney and all the rest!
The only good Democrat is a Dixiecrat!
Here’s Robin’s first post in where she “makes amends” for being liberal: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/letter_of_amends_from_a_recove.html
“To my brother in law, Sam, for blasting you in that Chinese restaurant for voting for Reagan, mea culpa.
To my cousin Joe for calling you a traitor when you became an MBA, started holding a real job (as opposed to most of us Berkeley types who are psychotherapists, massage therapists and aromatherapists), and became a conservative, my bad.
To my goddaughter whom I told when she was l0 years old that Republicans were bad, Democrats were good (yes I really did say this), and who got confused and tearful because she lives in a suburb where most people are Republicans, kid, what in the world was I thinking?
To my leftist friends, with whom I agreed that 9/ll was the US’s fault, you and I were all such jerks.
To those potential friends whom I dumped when I found out you were conservative, your gain is my loss.”
Here’s Robin’s latest post: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/the_shock_of_barack.html
“When I see what Obama is doing to this country, how he is treating its citizens, I’m reminded of the man who mugged me. I think that both are constitutionally incapable of seeing our humanity. And each day that Obama is in office, he communicates this same deadly message to the masses — that opponents are not human.”
=========
Or in other words, she was an *ss when she was a liberal and replacing left with right philosophy didn’t make her any less an *ss.
This Robin sounds like an extremist. I wonder if she and her pals sent those resignation ultimatums to all those governors.
Definitely sounds like there’s some tea bagging going on!
Pleasanton Mom, my job involves working with seniors with significant health issues and assisting public policy staff who work tirelessly to try to help influence legislation that will protect their right to receive adequate health care, among other things. My own brother, because he has Down’s Syndrome, is at extremely high risk for developing Alzheimer’s Disease at a (relative to others) young age.
The arrogance you exhibit by assuming that you have figured something out in the new health care system via your worship of conservative extremists that my colleagues and my family have not been smart enough to understand is beyond comprehension. In every area of my life, I have to live the current system and understand the new directives.
I am not under the impression that the new system is going to be perfect – there is much work to do. My sincere question remains: with 8 years in office, what did President Bush accomplish to help people like my brother or the seniors I deal with at work receive adequate health care? Rather than recede to your mantra re: Obama as the devil incarnate and all liberals being idiots, please respond to the question. If I am missing some wonderful system that Bush created that helped the families I deal with at work or my brother, I would love to know what that is.
Juan – I do not equate your crabgrass problem with health care. Last I checked, no one has died from problems with their crabgrass. If I am mistaken, please, do tell.
Are you of the impression that the private sector has done an adequate job with health care and there is no need for a change to protect those without adequate coverage? If so, how lucky you must be that no one in your life has been consistently denied coverage.
Where did you get the impression that I think the government is the answer to EVERYTHING, as you state? Please, enlighten me as to where I made such a broad statement.
I assure you, if there is something with the current system that you were smart enough to figure out, the rest of us would have understood the issue many paces ahead of you.
Excerpt from article attached: “Yet, despite the striking evidence of tort reform benefits in the nation’s second most populous state, this simple, basic and essential component of health care reform is completely missing from all Democrat proposals.
According to opensecrets.org, Democrats received over $178,000,000 from lawyers’ donations during the 2008 election cycle — three times what they donated to Republicans. Over $43,000,000 of that went to the Obama campaign.
Forty-three million reasons why Obamacare doesn’t include the one component of health care reform that has been proven to work: tort reform.”
Health care reform that actually works!
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/health_care_reform_that_actual.html
Since we’re paying the highest in the state (Alameda county at 9.75%), I don’t have much compassion for those cities that aren’t even paying that rate. San Mateo County doesn’t want to increase the current sales tax quarter-cent increase because it’s a difficult time for all of us. Yes, and it’s going to get more difficult when they start cutting the police, fire and teachers in their city.
We all have to tighten our belts and ‘suffer’ a little otherwise the suffering is going to be widespread and severe. Oh well….
…..or the state could reign in spending. But hey, taxing is easier.
Pleasanton Parent…I agree with you 100%. This outrageous spending needs to stop. But then, the talking heads go on TV/internet, etc. and tell how this program is being cut, etc. The special interest groups don’t want their programs cut, just cut someone else’s. It’s a vicious circle we’ve gotten ourselves into. Now, that the economy is bad due to our overspending on entitlement programs, union contracts, etc. etc. it’s all coming back on us.
Not a night goes by on the News, where we do not see various cities let firemen and policemen go; teachers have been laid off. Maybe we need to get back to what is essential in our community and go from there. It’s gonna get messy before it gets better.
hey move to philadelphia
state sales tax 6%.
state income tax 3.07%
No tax on pensions.
No prop 13.
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