Marina, TAMC Mull Taxes

City of Marina officials are expecting to undergo a tough couple of years, financially speaking. While dipping into the City’s reserve funds may be one way to stave off a deficit, launching another tax measure in the fall of 2006 is another.

To City Councilman Gary Wilmot, it appears Marina may have to do both.

“Going into our reserves is something we don’t want to do,” says Wilmot. “We’re working on our University Village and Marina Heights development projects right now, but we aren’t expected to see any income from them for at least three to four years.

“If we have any big, unexpected expenses in the near future, we will have to start cutting services.”

The City has a current budget of about $18 million.

Wilmot says the City Council is gearing up to run another tax measure in November of next year similar to the one that failed in 2004. Measure M, which lost by less than 170 votes a year ago, was a utility users’ tax that would have raised about $1.2 million for the City’s general fund.

Wilmot says one reason for the budget squeeze is that the City is paying to patrol and protect lands that used to belong to Fort Ord and were taken care of by the federal government. Until the City starts seeing revenue come in from new business and housing developments there, Wilmot says the City will need to “bridge the financial gap.”

“A measure utility tax will help us bridge that gap.”

Another tax is brewing for 2006, although not just for Marina. The Transportation Agency for Monterey County (TAMC) Board of Directors voted unanimously in December to ask the Board of Supervisors to place a 1⁄2-cent transportation sales tax on the June 2006 ballot. If approved by Monterey County voters, the sales tax revenues will help fund a 14-year strategic plan for safety and congestion relief projects.

The County Board of Supervisors is expected to act on the request from TAMC in January. [RV]

<>Supes Stall, Voters May Approve GPU</>

We’re going to try really, really hard to avoid the easy, Christmas-came-early-to-Monterey-County-voters joke. On Dec. 12, County Supervisor Dave Potter and a couple dozen community members submitted 15,793 signatures—gift wrapped, with big red bows—to qualify the “Community General Plan” initiative for the June 2006 ballot.

Later in the day, County Supervisors would spend about four hours deliberating the six-year-in-the-making county general plan.

Potter is the only member of the Board of Supervisors to endorse the general plan initiative, and he was the first to sign a petition about a month ago.

The initiative would concentrate growth in the cities and five designated “community areas,” increase affordable housing requirements, and require a countywide election to approve any new subdivision that’s not located in one of the designated areas.

As Potter pointed out at the Dec. 12 event, this is not a no-growth plan. Currently, 15,000 new homes have already been approved and an additional 49,000 new homes are in the pipeline. None of these will be affected by the general plan initiative.

Jane Parker, associate director of the ACTION Council of Monterey County who has said she will challenge Supervisor Jerry Smith when he’s up for reelection in three years, feels the fact that the signature gatherers were able to collect more than 15,000 signatures in a fraction of the time allowed (they had up to 180 days) shows that voters are fed up with a lack of leadership from the County Supervisors.

“For so long, land-use decisions have been made in an ad hoc way without really taking into consideration the future consequences of the decisions,” Parker says. “The public sees that. This initiative says there are places where we should grow and there are places where we shouldn’t. People have been trying for six years to participate in the public process and help the Board of Supervisors do their job, and approve a general plan, but the board doesn’t want to listen.” [JL]