Gullixson: Five simple reasons why Measure N failed

Measure N should have been a slam dunk - as election experts had promised it would be.

It should have been easy to persuade Santa Rosa voters that the city’s utility users tax, which has been around since 1970, needed to be updated to include cellphones. After all, the tax already applies to gas, electricity, cable and landline telephone bills. According to the city, cellphones are covered in nearly 80 percent of the 155 California cities that have utility users taxes.

It should have been an even easier sell given the council’s decision to cut the tax from 5 percent to 4.5 percent.

But on the same day that two Sonoma County communities - Sebastopol and Cloverdale - expanded and increased, respectively, their utility users taxes, Santa Rosa couldn’t get voters to cut one. And it wasn’t that close. At last count, the measure was losing by more than 6 percentage points.

Why? Here are five simple explanations, ones that could lead to other ballot-box failures if the City Council doesn’t face facts.

First, the council was divided. Two of the seven council members - Gary Wysocky and Julie Combs - were against putting N on the ballot. Petaluma’s Measure Q, which called for a full one-cent sales tax increase to support city services, is another example. It also fared poorly on Election Day after being opposed by two council members.

Second, Santa Rosa failed to make its case for why it needed a 24 percent increase in utility users tax revenue per year. Moreover, the city failed to assure residents that the money wouldn’t just be going to pay pensions and to meet the city’s out-of-control obligations to increase funding for public safety. While other cities, such as Cloverdale, sought increases in the tax to help it avoid more deep cuts in services, Santa Rosa is coming off a year of budget surplus. During the budget process in June, in fact, the council gave the Police Department an extra $1.4 million, not because it was needed but because it was required under the flawed language of Measure O, another tax problem the council has so far failed to address. (For more on this, see reason No. 5)

Third, a group of business leaders spent some $50,000 to defeat Measure N. That’s never a good sign. Developer Richard Coombs, a partner in the Airport Business Center, spearheaded the No on N campaign. He along with partners who own the six-story office building at 50 Old Courthouse Square, the Roxy Stadium 14 movie theater and the 3rd Street Cinemas building, were motivated by their frustration with how the city has been administering the utility users tax. And they have good reason to be ticked. As approved by voters, the tax has a cap of $1,000 a year on how much a single business can be charged. But the way the city oversees the tax, the burden is on businesses to know that the cap exists and when they have exceeded it. Coombs and company claim the city owes them $136,000 in overpayments. The city’s response: tough luck. So they ended up fighting the city both in court and at the polls. Losses for the city in both venues would not be a surprise.

Fourth, the city’s campaign was deceptive from the beginning. Yes, Santa Rosa cut the tax. But it was a one-step-back-and- two-steps-forward kind of thing. Call it a side-step. The main purpose of Measure N was to extend the tax to cellphones. This was evident from the council’s discussions on the matter. But you wouldn’t get that from reading the sample ballot. Nowhere in the city attorney’s “impartial analysis” on the measure does the word cellphone appear. The city was fixed on portraying Measure N as a “UUT Modernization and Fairness Measure,” as if there was some groundswell of public support demanding that the tax be modernized. Voters weren’t buying it. (Readers have since learned that the city attorney was one of the few who contributed money for the passage of Measure N. Of course, she has a First Amendment right to do so. But if she’s going to support the measure, the city should get someone else to write the analysis. She can’t be both partial and impartial on the same ballot measure.)

Finally, and probably the most significant reason for the failure of Measure N, is the city is losing the trust of the public.

When voters passed Measure O 10 years ago, it was understood that the revenue from the quarter-cent sales tax would augment funding for police, fire and gang prevention. It was intended to be a life-raft to keep public safety programs afloat. But it’s now steering the ship, influencing decisions concerning funding for all departments. The City Council has had ample opportunity to ask voters to fix the wording of Measure O, but it has so far chosen not to. And now there’s rumblings that that may not occur at all.

If so, it’s my guess voters will find another way to voice their displeasure - possibly if and when the city seeks renewal of Measure P, a quarter-cent sales tax that provides some $9.5 million a year in revenue to the city’s general fund. That’s due to expire in four years.

Council members Wysocky and Combs both opposed moving ahead with Measure N because they wanted to fix Measure O before anything else. “I want to stop the bleeding first,” Combs said at the time.

She may have been referring to spending. But it’s evident by the failure of a ballot measure on Nov. 4 that should have succeeded, the city’s relationship with voters is hemorrhaging as well.

Paul Gullixson is editorial director for The Press Democrat. Email him at paul.gullixson@pressdemocrat.com.