Ukiah voters to decide whether to extend sales tax

Ukiah’s police and fire departments are banking on their city’s voters renewing a half-cent sales tax they have been depending on for nearly a decade.

If approved by voters, Measure P would keep Ukiah’s sales tax at 8.125 percent and make the increase permanent to help avoid fluctuations in the city’s public safety budget.

Without the tax, which currently generates about ?$2.4 million annually, public safety departments would need to be cut at a time when the need for services has been rising, city officials say.

“That funding is critical to police and fire services in our community,” Ukiah Police Chief Chris Dewey said. Calls for police service have increased from about 60 calls per day to well over 95 a day since voters approved the tax nine years ago, he said.

“Without this tax, I don’t know how we’d handle those increased calls,” Dewey said.

The sales tax currently accounts for almost 28 percent of the city’s $8.6 million budget for police and fire services.

“We would have to look at massive cuts for public safety” if Measure P does not pass, Ukiah City Manager Jane Chambers said.

The city also would have to suspend plans to create a valley-wide fire department through a merger with the Ukiah Valley Fire District, said John Bartlett, the chief of both departments.

No one is officially opposing the tax, but it is not criticism free. Critics say they aren’t convinced the city will spend the money as promised.

Neither the original tax measure, Measure S, nor the renewal measure mandate that the money go to public safety. Instead, there was a companion measure that advised the council to make public safety services a priority. City officials say that nearly all of the original tax money was used for public safety and that all of it will be used that way in the future.

The city opted not to specify a use for the tax in the measure’s language because doing so would require a two-thirds vote to pass. Measure P needs only a majority of the vote in the Nov. 4 election.

To help calm concerns about how the money is spent, city officials plan to create an oversight committee to review and report on the fund’s use.

Voters on the Mendocino coast also are considering public safety taxes. The Albion-Little River Fire Protection District is asking voters to increase its fire protection tax from $40 per unit to $75. Fort Bragg residents are asked to increase their fire tax from $18 per parcel to $22 per parcel.

Each of those will require approval by two-thirds of voters.

You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at 462-6473 or glenda.?anderson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MendoReporter