If voters approve the taxes, complainant will likely sue for a refund.

Pacific Grove resident Carl Mounteer, a Monterey lawyer, recently challenged PG’s tax Measure P on the grounds that the proposed parcel tax violates 1978’s Proposition 13, which limits property taxes. Meanwhile, the county registrar printed and mailed out military and test ballots for the Nov. 6 election in compliance with state deadlines.

But the plaintiff’s case got snagged on a deadline dilemma of its own. Mounteer filed his complaint on Aug. 31, four days after the Aug. 27 deadline. He says that an elections official misinformed him about the cutoff.

Monterey County Superior Court Judge Robert O’Farrell heard the matter on Sept. 20. Mounteer, representing himself, said that he was pursuing the case “to prevent just this kind of fraudulent measure from getting on the ballot… so that after the election, we don’t have to litigate this thing again.”

An unmoved Judge O’Farrell struck down the case on Sept. 21, ruling that Mounteer had failed to show that removing the measures would not interfere with the printing and distribution of election materials. Additionally, he ruled, a constitutional challenge to Measure P would be better addressed after the election.

Mounteer argues that Measure P violates state Prop. 13, which limits property taxes to 1 percent of market value. The measure would impose a flat parcel tax of about $120 per year regardless of property value.

PG City Attorney David Laredo says Measure P represents an excise tax rather than a property tax because owners of parcels that are vacant, undeveloped or otherwise less benefited by municipal services may apply for exemptions. “That’s what makes it an excise tax,” he says. “It relates to services.”

Mounteer isn’t buying it. “That is just a mere relabeling of a property tax as an excise tax,” he says. “They keep trying to change the terms of this tax to get around this law.”

Measure P will appear on the ballot with Measures O and Q, which would remove the city’s $3,000 business tax cap and raise the sales tax by one-half cent. The proposed tax package will only go into effect if all three measures receive majority votes.

Mounteer says that, if voters approve the tax package, he may sue for a refund. It’s his way of bumping up against a government that, in his view, refuses to shrink. “Their solution is always tax or borrow,” he says. “They never cut spending. I don’t care if they’re in fiscal trouble. That’s their problem.”

Laredo isn’t surprised by Mounteer’s threat to sue. “Anytime you’re doing something like a tax, that’s a lightning rod for discontent,” he says.