How SF Bay city governments are spending your cheddar
Image by Marco Verch
Local taxpayer advocate Chris Robell writes in the San Mateo Daily Journal that amidst Redwood City Council's incessant pleas for more taxpayer money (yep, they're hoping to raise the sales tax again today), a comically simple yet overlooked solution remains: be smarter about City spending. Robell analyzes some recently approved Deadwood City expenditures, and—spoiler alert—they get a bit ridiculous.
On November 27, 2023, Redwood City’s City Council will vote whether to pursue increased taxes on our community, despite the city’s continued pattern of extravagant spending with virtually no efforts to reign in costs.
Let’s put this in perspective: Redwood City is the highest taxed city in the county at 9.875%. In 2018, voters overwhelmingly supported Measure RR’s half cent sales tax hike, since we were threatened with cuts to essential city services including on-duty firefighters/paramedics/police officers, 911 response times, after school recreations programs and library hours.
Moreover, city fees have also increased dramatically. For example, city residents now pay +12% more in garbage fees vs. last year. And on Dec 4th there will be a city hearing to approve a +39% increase in residents’ fixed water service charges (from $59.04 to $82.09). And, despite sewer charges that are double what many nearby cities pay, the city hired a consultant to evaluate increases beyond the current $89.28 per month sewer rate.
In fact, I have learned that the city has hired (at our expense) at least six separate consulting firms to identify and develop plans to raise our taxes and fees further. And once they figure out which taxes to pursue, they plan to hire polling and marketing firms to try and help “convince” us of the wisdom of new taxes. These firms will likely help the city draft a deceptive ballot question to trick voters into voting “yes”, effectively allowing the government to take sides in an election with our money. Just follow the Measure RR or school bond playbook.
Why is the city doing this? Because, despite all the past tax and fee increases, the City Council and City Manager say they need more money. And if the spending problems continue, perhaps they will. But spending is the problem.
I have watched every city council meeting for the past two years. They have approved every single expenditure staff has requested with not a single council member ever voting “no”; all expenditures are voted “yes” unanimously.
So, what are they spending our money on? Examples in the past few months include $1M of luxury office furniture (with $2,000 Herman Miller chairs), a posh weekend wine retreat in Sonoma for all City Council and city staff, approval of a large salary increase for the City Manager with base salary of $394K and total comp at $500k, and an army of consultants to derive new ways to take our hard-earned money.
Equally concerning, is that there has never been a staff agenda item focused on how to cut costs given the budget challenges they repeatedly cite. Consider this: property taxes and sales/use tax are the largest sources of revenue for the city. And over the past four years (2017-18 to 2021-22), the city’s revenue has increased +41% from property taxes (from $51.3M to $72.5M) and +62% from sales tax/use tax (from $22.1M to $35.8M). All, while population in Redwood City has declined almost 9% since 2020. Has your household income jumped 41%? If it did, would you be asking others for more?
This article originally appeared in the San Mateo Daily Journal. Read the whole thing here.
Related:
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