Residents of SLO facing tax fatigue
On Nov. 4, San Luis Obispo voters will be voting on three local tax/bond measures. A new half-cent city sales tax (Measure G), a $177 million San Luis Coastal Unified School District bond, and a $275 million Cuesta College bond. No sooner than the economy starts to recover from the recession, each one of these public entities is eager to solicit your resources to support their needs.
Measure G, the new half-cent sales tax, is unnecessary when you consider the addiction to revenue our city has.
The marketing narrative from City Hall contends Measure G is an “extension” of Measure Y instead of calling it the “new tax” that it is.
Misrepresenting the truth to ascertain an affirmative vote is deceitful. Nothing in the 2006 original ballot language provides an option to extend the tax when it expires in March 2015. In fact, “eight years only” is explicit and unequivocal. Projecting that more than 70 percent of the sales tax comes from consumers who don’t reside in the city cannot be substantiated and is speculative at best. Fear mongering tactics such as “residents will lose services,” or “capital improvement projects will be diminished” are acts of coercion. An impartial audit done this past spring confirms categorically that spending on capital improvement projects has remained constant the past 15 years, while staffing costs have escalated at an alarming rate, consuming the lion’s share of the additional revenue. Proponents should cease with the deceptive portraiture as it continues to insult the integrity of the informed voter.
San Luis Coastal Unified School District is the victim of poor leadership in Sacramento, as our state Legislature continues to de-prioritize spending on public education. How is it that California now ranks 49th in the nation in perstudent spending on K-12 when Californians pay some of the highest taxes in the country?
Our state leaders continue to lose sight of their commitment to quality education by fraudulently mismanaging and squandering our precious resources, hence thrusting the unfair burden onto the backs of our local economies.
Cuesta College is asking district taxpayers to open their wallets to the tune of a $275 million bond for facility repairs and upgrades. Based on my research, the facts simply don’t support the timing of this request. Overall enrollment has dropped 30 percent during the past four years, as have completion rates at the North County and San Luis Obispo campuses. Some course offerings in technical and vocational fields have been eliminated, with more concentration on transferable courses to four year universities. There has been a steady growth in students coming from outside the district to attend Cuesta because of its high transfer rate to Cal Poly and the students do not pay any additional tuition or fees. Only half of all students achieve their goal of a degree, certificate, or transfer to a four-year university, and they do so in six years.
The current facilities appear underutilized, underscoring the need for a comprehensive feasibility study to assess the potential for consolidating the North County and San Luis Obispo campuses into one location.
Administrative operations should be evaluated when considering the merits of this facilities bond. When you add in summer session pay, more than half the district’s full-time faculty are paid in excess of $100,000 per year in total compensation (source: http://transparentcalifornia.com), while the overall number of classes Cuesta offers has dropped. The recent summer session was thrown together, not as a result of long-term planning, but as a relatively last-minute effort to garner students to prevent a loss in revenue from the state. Not a good master plan for ongoing sustainable funding and meeting the district’s standard for quality education and student success.
Cuesta recently emerged from the sanctions of accreditation and has spent $120,000 on bond feasibility preparation. In addition, the Foundation has committed another $65,000 to market this bond to the taxpayers. Is this too soon to be asking for an investment of this size when the future of the college was uncertain earlier this year? You’ll have to decide.
The average SLO resident is not only facing these local tax/bond measures in November, but also facing higher sewer and water rates, rising utility costs, higher gas taxes, higher personal income tax, rising health care costs, food, transportation and other necessities. How will these measures impact working families, fixed income seniors, students with debt and the working poor?
Property tax bonds in the city of SLO are inherently regressive. With two-thirds of the residences now non-owner occupied, landlords are inclined to pass on any property tax increases to their tenants.
As your elected leaders, we should be setting an example of sound fiscal oversight. It’s simply a bad time to ask SLO residents to open their wallets. It’s time for all agencies to tighten their belts and live within their means just as our residents have been throughout the recovery.
This story was originally published September 18, 2014 at 8:47 AM with the headline "Residents of SLO facing tax fatigue."