According to the latest numbers from the Registrar of Voters, Measure E has definitely failed. As of November 15, the ballot measure to raise the city’s sales tax to support infrastructure funding has been turned down by city voters.
Measure E, known as the San Diego Transaction and Use Tax, would have increased the tax on transactions in the city by 1%, bringing the total sales tax to 8.75%. The current rate in the city is 7.75%.
It was very close with only 9,000 votes between the “no” vote and the “yes” vote.
Advocates of E claimed the additional $400 million raised by the proposal would go to a wide range of city needs, including infrastructure projects, core services and general spending.
Mayor Gloria had pinned his second administration being funded by the monies collected from E — it was his great hope. Now, those dreams need to be chained to reality and he and his council cohorts need to figure out how to balance the city’s awkward budget.
And during this upcoming period, Gloria will be under intense scrutiny by observers and pundits both because of the speculations swirling around the city about where he will now turn for his funds. Many are worried and concerned that he will turn to the projects that make a city work for its residents and begin to chip away at their funding in order to finance the core budget.
Other tax measures in the County had time limits, ranging from 10-20 years, but E was worded so the measure would continue “until ended by voters, requiring citizen oversight and independent audits,” the ballot measure reads. Some observers believe the open-ended timeline and the range of what the funds could potentially be used for worried opponents.
They’ll simply stick it to us with the voter approved trash pickup fee.
Why the un-specified trash fee pass and Measure E failed is beyond me. They are both scams that allow the politicians to spend more and more of your money. Everybody lives on a budget, why not the city, county, state and country governments??
I was under the impression that we are one of the only cities in California without trash fees for single family homes.
We are already paying fees for trash pickup. Did you think the sanitation workers were volunteers?
If you pay property taxes, then you are contributing to trash fee that goes to the city. Look at your tax statement for property. There are several items that we are responsible for.
If you rent, most likely it’s included in your rent.
Add Measure E to Gloria’s tombstone.
That would have floated his Kettner and Vine money to slam down our throats as he waves bye bye to his next gig.
A qualified and experienced City Manager could better deal with this dilemma than a career politician!
According to NBC7 in an interview yesterday, the city thinks the fee will generate around $80 million for the 285,000 households. According to my calculations, that would run around $25.00 per month per household. My question is where did they come up with the $80,000,000 cost and now that the additional 1% sales tax increase failed, will we see an increase in the cost estimate to fill the city coffers?
And will your property tax be reduced by the same amount?
YES to a City Manager. Every time I go by a new project, it seems I see for every 10 city employees standing (or sitting in trucks) around talking 2 employees are actually doing something. I’m convinced some city desk jockeys come up with ridiculous ideas like ‘street calming’ and corner curb widening to justify their time on the clock and try to look needed. One friend recently retired from city maintenance after 40+ years always smiled about the easy overtime. He frowned about the newest employees he said do half the work for twice the pay and couldn’t understand what qualifications they had to get them in other than being friends & family. I’ve never seen a study concerning accountability. Or perhaps on the bloat in our city gov. Maybe a study with a comparable city in size, like Dallas, about budget size, payroll, number of employees, etc. Finally, I shake my head when I scroll on this site –
https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/2022statecompensationreport.pdf