City Finance Committee: What Happened?

The city's finance advisory committee met Wednesday, January 7 in the police station. READ OUR CORRESPONDENT LIONEL EMDE'S NEWS ANALYSIS 

Also see the discussion on this developing story by clicking Comments at the bottom of this post and at the bottom of Lionel's post. While you're there, feel free to leave a comment of your own.

Comments

[Jeffrey Simons]

this was an exceptional meeting and I have every confidence this committee is NOT rubber stamping a recommendation to City Council.

one committee member, though, summed it up best:

we need to change the way we've done things for the past 20 years. We need to stop saying NO and start working with businesses to grow our economy and our revenue and stop relying on taxes. Hopefully this sales tax will sunset quickly (and I will honestly say I'm not sold on a YES vote or a NO vote either way right now).

[todd bray]

I was sent the agenda and it appears the committee will be given a handful of options from which to pick a tax recommend to council. The agenda doesn't list the committee members names like a real agenda.

here it is: CITY OF PACIFICA

FINANCING CITY SERVICES TASK FORCE
AGENDA

January 7, 2009
6:00 PM
Pacifica Police Station
2075 Coast Highway

1. Call to Order

2. Discussion Financing Measure Recommendation to City Council

3. Next Steps

4. Next Meeting

Not much to go on here.

If you haven't read Larry DiMartini's LTE today it appears the council has paid a telemarketing firm to poll Pacificans about their feelings concerning the "new" taxes we will be paying and how do Pacificans feel about the current council. Larry's final thoughts on the matter are quite clear.

If the fix is in and this committee is there only to give the appearance of citizen involvement to a solution that's already been decided then I think we need to speak up tonight. It's one thing to have a committee openly discuss options then find a consensus then write up a recommendation, but it's something all together different if the citizens on a committee are there to merely rubber stamp a conclusion made by staff or council. I hope what we see tonight is the former not the latter.

[Lionel Emde]

Steve,
I'd say it's a bunch of hippies, except I don't know.

[Lance]

Mr. Bray, you make an excellent point. to have any impact, the sales tax would have to be huge. How about 3/4%? that would effectively double the sales tax that Pacifica collects from our impacted retail sector.
And Tom, you also make an excellent point. Increase the regressive taxes enough and we'll need all those parks we're funding to live in.

[Steve Sinai]

Who's on the committee?

[Lionel Emde]

It's called "Financing City Services Task Force"

It hasn't generated any docs or emails.

That there is some kind of poll data is news.

I'm really curious about this committee's work without any data supplied to them that's visible.

[todd bray]

A sales tax increase would have to be pretty high to have any real impact. We currently receive 1 penny in sales tax for every dollar spent. Out of the 8.5 cents of sales tax we only get 1 cent which equals about a million dollars a year. If a tax increase is to mean anything it would have to be an extra penny or more to have any sort of "positive" financial impact on the general fund.

[Tom Edminster]

"pick our pockets.."

1. does the city need revenue?
2. Who has picked public pockets more: Enron, Worldcom, Madoff, the mortgage industry, the war makers, etc..---- or ... those who depend on regressive taxes to keep public entities afloat: those that provide for parks and rec, police, fire, cops, etc...
3. thanks for the info..