Labor battles threaten Santa Rosa housing bond

There’s a $124 million housing bond going before Santa Rosa voters this fall.

That much was decided by the City Council in late July.

Now comes the hard part - creating consensus over how to spend the money. The City Council will meet tonight to settle the matter, crafting the language that will accompany the measure on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Business and labor groups have been at odds over proposed ballot language requiring the use of prevailing wages, local labor and apprenticeship programs, which are virtually all union.

Labor groups say the requirements are crucial to ensuring workers are paid fairly and a local trained workforce is cultivated.

Business groups worry the requirements will add unnecessary costs to projects, reducing the number of total units that can be built with the proceeds of the bond measure.

After weeks of lobbying, posturing and threatening, the two sides seem willing to take flamethrowers to the effort if they don’t get their way.

“If this measure has to die because certain elements in the business community have this animus toward workers, then maybe that’s what has to happen,” said Jack Buckhorn, executive director of the North Bay Labor Council.

Among other conditions, labor leaders want language guaranteeing that 20 percent of the jobs on projects funded with bond money will go to union apprentices and another 10 percent of the jobs will go to skilled union tradesmen.

Councilman Jack Tibbetts said he’s been working to win over key business groups in the city, but opposition is strong to the proposal earmarking 10 percent of the jobs for union tradesmen.

“It’s been made very clear to me if we move forward with this 10 percent, not only are basically half of the stakeholders going to walk away, we’ve heard there is going to be funded opposition,” Tibbetts said.

That’s no idle threat.

The $370 million countywide housing bond that Tibbetts was involved with fell apart in the spring after the Sonoma County Farm Bureau opposed the property tax increase as an unfair burden on rural property owners, and the Sonoma County Alliance suggested regulatory reform might be a smarter approach.

After the countywide effort imploded, the focus shifted to Santa Rosa, which is where much of new affordable housing stock would likely be built anyway.

It zeroed in on a $124 million bond, paid for through a property tax increase of $29 per $100,000 of assessed value. That’s about $110 per year for a typical Santa Rosa home.

Advocates say the money is crucial to the city’s efforts to leverage other state and federal funds, which could help the city build at least 1,200 units of affordable housing, they estimate. The city lost nearly 3,100 homes in the October fires.

While the council agreed to the size of the bond, members temporarily set aside debate over the ballot language, hoping a deal could be struck that all could agree on, or, absent that, agree not to publicly oppose the measure.

Less than 24 hours before todday’s City Council meeting, it was not clear if any such deal would hold.

Keith Woods, executive director of the North Coast Builder’s Exchange, reiterated his group’s opposition to a ballot measure that would carve out jobs for one special interest group.

“They can put in there that it’ll be good for kittens and rainbows and that everything will be wonderful,” Woods said. “But we don’t think it should be tricked with special considerations for one group.”

While his group strongly believes the region needs more housing, its support for the measure will be directly tied to the number and type of special provisions added to it, Woods said.

“The language will be critical to our decision,” he said.

In addition to language guaranteeing 30 percent of the jobs would go to union tradesmen and apprentices, Buckhorn has demanded assurances that most workers would be hired locally and paid prevailing wages.

In other cases, Buckhorn said he has pressed for taxpayer-funded projects to have full project labor agreements, which set the terms and conditions of employment for an entire construction project.

He didn’t do that here because he knew how important it was for housing to be built quickly, he said.

A compromise measure has been drafted by business leaders, including Santa Rosa Metro Chamber Executive Director Peter Rumble, Sonoma County Alliance Executive Director Brian Ling, and local developer Hugh Futrell. The group drafted a letter to the City Council urging it not to agree to the “public benefits” language proposed by Buckhorn.

Such language “would have the effect of conferring on certain unions monopoly benefits injurious to the public interest. That just can’t be justified,” the men wrote.

The group offered similar but less restrictive language regarding the labor provisions at issue.

For example, a contractor on a project would be required to certify that “a substantive portion” of the workers on the job live in Sonoma, Lake, Mendocino, Marin or Napa counties.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 707-521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.