Election Wrap Up

While there were no elections here in San Joaquin County, many cities across the state held City Council elections while others held special elections to preserve or increase taxes.

As I noted last spring, our city's Budget Advisory Commitee made it painfully clear that there would be no chance of increasing revenues here in Manteca until we demonstrated that we had cut all unnecessary expenditures--including reductions in the labor contracts for all of our employees.

Yesterday, in a desperation measure, the City of Salinas attempted to pass a one cent sales tax for Public Safety. Even during the best economic times, most cities (including Manteca) never asked for more than one-half cent. Not suprisingly, the measure went down in flames (click here for story) and now they must do what the rest of us are doing--cutting beyond the bone. Ventura and San Carlos had half-cent measures that failed while two cities had measures which passed.

Statewide, a number of utility tax measures passed. Most of these were clean up measures to ensure that an existing utility tax was valid under the current state law. There were some upscale communities that were able to pass parcel taxes and some school bonds passed as well. However, there were very few cities that even attempted to get new revenues from their voters.

For an excellent summary of all the ballot measures, click here.