Sonoma County supervisors approve two tax measures for November ballot

Tourist tax increase, half-cent sales tax on the ballot for voter approval|

As the City of Sonoma is asking voters this fall to renew the half-cent sales tax measure first approved in 2012, several other tax measures are headed for the November ballot to raise funds for regional parks, libraries and, yes, even roads, asking voters to pay yet a little bit more to provide more services and benefits to living in Sonoma County.

Added to no fewer than 17 state ballot initiatives, the voter will be asked to weigh in on almost two dozen issues this fall.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Aug. 9, the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 to approve for the ballot two tax proposals, one to levee additional taxes of visitors to the county to support and mitigate tourism, and the other an incremental sales tax increase to support regional parks system.

Second District Supervisor David Rabbitt, who had expressed skepticism about both ballot measures for different reasons, was absent from the meeting.

The measure to increase the countywide Transient Occupancy Tax or TOT, from 9 percent to 12 percent, is expected to raise $4.8 million annually to be used at the discretion of the Board. The TOT has traditionally been used to “encourage tourism, agriculture, and economic development in the County by supporting a series of promotional, community and cultural, activities through the use of advertising funds.”

This time the county is proposing that 75 percent of the amount raised (protected at $3.6 million) go not just to encourage, but also to mitigate the impact of tourism, including money for fire and emergency services, workforce housing, workforce development, code enforcement, and operator compliance.

“We know that Sonoma County is a desirable place to visit, and we use a great deal of the money to promote Sonoma County as a tourism destination,” said 1st District Supervisor Susan Gorin. “But we also know that tourism in general produces impacts on the community and the county at large.”

She listed the effect of added traffic on roads, the financial impact that car and bicycle accidents have on emergency services, and even its impact on affordable housing.

“We’re having challenges with folks working in the tourism industry being able to find a place and afford a place to live in the county,” said Gorin.

A quarter of the new revenue, estimated at $1.2 million, would go to into the General Fund, not to tourism-related expenses; an additional portion of those monies could be directed to funding roads and other infrastructure.

While the increase in TOT from 9 percent to 12 percent seems substantial, it will fall not on residents but visitors who come to the county and stay in hotels, motels and permitted short-term rentals. The current TOT rate of 9 percent was established in 1992, and is lower than seven of the eight cities within Sonoma County, and lower than many comparable counties in California including neighboring Marin, Mendocino and Napa counties.

“The voters have rejected the increase in TOT once before, but they’re so angry about the impact of tourism that maybe they’ll support it this time,” said Gorin, whose district has borne the brunt of a dramatic increase in wine tourism.

The supervisors will also likely approve a sales tax increase measure to support Sonoma County Regional Parks, in the amount of a half cent. Though the supervisors can legally impose a sales tax throughout the county, including its incorporated cities, they have decided that this increase will only apply to non-incorporated areas, said Gorin. “If we included the cities we would be approaching the state limit for cumulative sales taxes” – a situation that was one factor in the rejection of a county-wide sales tax in 2015.

Nonetheless, since the tax is earmarked for a specific purpose, it will require a two-thirds vote of approval to pass.

“There is a list of deferred maintenance items in all of our parks,” the supervisor noted. “New parks have come onto the regional parks inventory and we need to have recreational amenities and services on those sites, but existing parks also need to be have more facilities developed on them.” She pointed to ballfields, tennis courts and playground equipment needs at both Maxwell Farms and Larson regional parks in the Sonoma Valley that would benefit from additional funding.

Earlier, Rabbit had said the county should be cautious about asking voters for a sales tax increase, especially after Measure A, a countywide general sales tax increase billed as a way to fix roads, was defeated at the ballot box last June.

“I’m not in favor of moving forward on any of these sales taxes,” he said. “I’m skeptical of most of these measures.”

The board’s approval this week met the requirement to place tax measures on the November ballot, as the deadline for doing so is today, Friday, Aug. 12. It follows an earlier action to place a vote on community separators on the ballot, which would renew the county’s longstanding rule requiring property owners seek additional voter approval for projects such as large housing subdivisions, for example, or commercial projects on largely undeveloped county lands separating cities.

Meanwhile, the Sonoma County Library Commission is asking for an eighth-cent sales tax, an extra funding source that could add about $10 million annually to the library’s $17 million budget, said Sonoma County Library Director Brett Lear. A similar measure in 2014 failed to pass, though it did gain 62 percent favorable votes, short of the 67 percent required for targeted tax increases.

The November ballot could be crowded with still other measures asking voters to open their pocketbooks. Besides the potential county taxes, the library sales tax and, in the City of Sonoma, a half-cent sales tax to replace the expiring Measure J funds, there will be a record 17 initiatives on the statewide ballot.

Among them: a proposition seeking $9 billion in bonds to fund improvements and construction of public schools, charter schools and community colleges (Proposition 51); a change in how the state funds Medi-Cal programs (Proposition 52); voter approval any time the state issues more than $2 billion in public-infrastructure bonds (Proposition 53); a repeal of a state-wide ban on bilingual education in public schools (Proposition 58); a bill to require condom use in pornography films (Proposition 60); a bill to tighten restrictions for background checks and the purchasing of ammunition (Proposition 63); and a bill to legalize the recreational use of marijuana (Proposition 64) – plus 10 more measures that require voter approval.

(Matt Brown of the Petaluma Argus-Courier contributed to this report).

Contact Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.

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