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Measure Q
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Arguments For and Against Measure Q Transient Occupancy Tax Arguments in Favor of Measure Q Measure Q requires tourists to pay for the services they receive while visiting our community and ensures that your tax dollars are not used to fund the Santa Cruz County Conference and Visitors Council. Over the next ten years, Measure Q will make over $4 million available for vital city services while creating accountability and safeguards on how your tax dollars are spent. Specifically Measure Q will: · Help with the city’s budget crisis. Measure Q will make available over $400,000 every year, now spent on tourism promotion, for vital city services such as senior care, fire department paramedic response or reducing drug use and loitering on our downtown streets. And, additional money will also be generated for local programs through sales taxes paid by tourists. · Create accountability. Measure Q ensures accountability and safeguards on how tax money will be spent. Measure Q requires an independent audit, conducted annually, to ensure that tax dollars are used as specified in the measure. · Be paid for by tourists. Measure Q requires hotel and motel guests to pay an additional 1% on their room rates. City of Santa Cruz residents living in their homes will not have their taxes affected in any way by this measure. · Protect local jobs. Santa Cruz County is feeling the effects of California’s slumping economy. Measure Q will help put people back to work and protect existing jobs. On November 5th, please join labor unions, local businesses, senior citizens, working families, elected officials, moderates and progressives in supporting Measure Q. It will free up money for essential city services every year while creating responsibility and accountability on how tax dollars are spent. s/ Rowland Rebele, Director, Homeless Services Center s/ Leonard O’Neill, Executive Director Hotel/Restaurant Workers Union Local 483 s/ Leslie Sunell, President, Santa Cruz Area Chamber of Commerce s/ Karen Darling, President, Santa Cruz County Lodging Association s/ Fred Keeley, Assemblymember
Rebuttal to argument in Favor of Measure
Q
The Hospitality Alliance states that Measure
Q “requires tourists to pay for the services they receive,” and will “ensure
that your tax dollars are not used” to fund the Convention and Visitors
Council (CVC). On the contrary, all of the “tax dollars” raised by Measure
Q will fund the CVC now and in the future.
An average of 15,000 tourists a day (year
round) generates the need for a lot of City services. These include
emergency services – police, fire/paramedic, lifeguards – as well as
routine: cleaning and maintenance of streets, sidewalks, beaches, bathrooms,
parks, and other public areas. Additionally there is parking, traffic
control, beach shuttle buses, and so forth. These services, available to
visitors, who don’t pay property taxes,
cost city taxpayers millions of dollars a year. If Measure Q does
generate additional tourism, then a substantial portion of the money it
raises should have been dedicated to the City to help pay these extra
costs. Not one cent will go to the City.
The Alliance implies that the City is in some
way obligated to give the CVC $400,000 every year from our General Fund.
That is not the case. The City is not obligated to give the CVC any
money. The cities of Watsonville, Scotts Valley, and Capitola, which the
CVC also serves, have been giving the CVC only token contributions.
This tax greatly
benefits businesses that serve tourists. They should promote their business
with their own money, not with public funds.
PLEASE VOTE NO ON MEASURE
Q. s/ Gordon Pusser, Committee
Opposed to Measure Q
Argument in Favor
Measure Q imposes a new 1% Transient Occupancy Tax which will
be collected by the City and turned over to one private countywide
organization – the Convention and Visitors Council (CVC) – that will spend
all of these public tax funds each year on salaries, advertising, and
promotion of private business.
This diversion of public funds to enrich private Tourist
oriented businesses sets frightening precedent:
·
City tax dollars
will be spent throughout the entire county.
·
Only this one organization – the CVC – will get
any of these funds.
·
No matter how much this bonanza could be in
future years, it would all go to the CVC.
·
It sets up one organization as more worthy that
others.
Measure Q is unfair to the dozens of private non-profits the
City partially funds and their thousands of volunteers and supporters. Why
don’t they also deserve a special law funding them? These agencies help
Seniors, the disabled, children, women in peril, the blind, stroke victims,
to cite just a few. Why should a Council promoting tourism be put ahead of
them?
The truth is no group should have its funding locked in by
its own special law. Future City Councils, as stewards of public funds
should be responsive to future citizens and their needs. A Council
should not be found by a CVC “sweetheart deal” from years in the past. We
don’t know what the future holds.
Measure _ might have been more palatable if some of its fatal
flaws had been addressed, but they weren’t. In its present form it is
totally unacceptable. Santa Cruz voters have apparently never before passed
a special General Fund tax to be given to a special group in perpetuity.
They should not do this now. VOTE NO ON MEASURE Q.
s/ Gordon Pusser, Committee Opposed to Measure Q
Argument in Favor The community leaders that we trust are supporting Measure Q. The opponent of Measure Q is wrong. · By law, these funds will be independently audited every year to ensure that they are used as specified in the measure. · Over the next ten years, Measure Q will make over $4 million available for vital city services like improving fire department paramedic response or reducing drug use and loitering on our downtown streets. The city also has the ability to use this money for other worthy non-profits, including those who provide senior care and affordable housing. · Based on current funding, passing measure Q will actually reduce the city’s funding of the Santa Cruz County Conference and Visitors Council by over twenty percent – requiring neighboring communities to pay their fair share. On November 5th, we hope you’ll join with thousands of other Santa Cruz residents and us in supporting Measure Q. s/ Larry Pearson, Owner, Pacific Cookie Company s/ George Ow, Jr. s/ Emily Reilly, Vice-Mayor s/ Ann Morhauser, Owner/Artist, Annieglass s/ Michael J. Paul, President & CEO, Goodwill Industries
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