June 18, 2002

Utility tax polling results awaited

By DAN WHITE
Sentinel staff writer

SANTA CRUZ — This week the city will release results of a citywide survey gauging support for the 7 percent utility tax, which faces a challenge at the ballot box in November.

But opponents of the tax, who collected signatures to force a ballot measure, are already calling the poll misleading.

The city paid a San Francisco pollster $18,000 to conduct the survey.

The tax generates an estimated $8 million a year in general fund revenues. Money to pay for the survey was drawn from $30,000 the city set aside last year for polls.

Bay Area-based Bregman and Associates called 400 randomly selected city voters during the weekend, asking them to rank city services from public safety to recreation.

Assistant city manager Martin Bernal said the prioritization will help the city make tough choices if the utility tax doesn’t survive the November election.

Residents were asked to decide whether they would preserve the utility tax if the vote were held right now. After being asked to state their views on cutting police, fire and other areas, they were then asked if they would still throw out the tax "if you knew that all or nearly all of the cuts you just discussed would have to be made."

This line of questioning angered utility tax opponent Steve Hartman, who said pollsters asked leading questions to frighten voters. "The poll is highly biased," said Hartman, who was polled himself.

The latest poll also asks residents if they feel life in Santa Cruz has gotten better or worse and how well city government is performing.

In the 1998 poll, 55 percent thought the government was doing a good to excellent job. The rating slipped to 51 percent in a 2000 poll. The amount of people who thought the city was doing a fair-to-poor job went from 42 to 45 percent in that time.

The last two polls showed a bigger dip in satisfaction with life in Santa Cruz, mostly citing high housing costs and bad traffic as the reasons. In 1998, 47 percent said the city was a better place to live than two years before, and 25 percent thought it was worse. By 2000, only 36 percent thought life in the city had improved recently and 41 percent thought it was worse.

Meanwhile, on Monday pro-and-anti-utility tax groups worked hard to submit ballot arguments in to the City Clerk’s office on time.

Bookshop Santa Cruz owner Neal Coonerty, who heads the pro-utility tax campaign group, said the group will pay for a poll of its own. The results will help with the private group’s campaign and probably not be made public, he said.

The city’s poll however, will be public information because it was paid for with public funds.

Four members of the pro-utility tax group — Coonerty, Santa Cruz Police Lt. Patty Sapone, city firefighter Mark Violante and banker Rod Quartararo — drew up arguments in favor of the utility tax.

The basis of their argument: that Santa Cruz residents can’t afford to lose essential services such as public safety, flood control, street maintenance and recreation; that the national economic downturn has already hurt city revenues, forcing cuts of about $2 million, and that the state will likely make dramatic cuts to local funds. The group argues the tax could result in the loss of paramedics, foot patrols downtown, regular maintenance of sports fields and neighborhood parks, swim classes and marine rescue.

The anti-utility tax group argues that the tax hurts low-income families and feeds a city that runs on a "huge budget managed by incompetent, unskilled and unprofessional special interest utopians," while likening the city government to a "morbidly obese patient" who should "go on a diet." The group argues the city has an excessive number of employees and drives up costs by spending money on projects devoted to "political allies and cronies of the city council," citing the proposed Doug Rand Peace Park as an example.

Contact Dan White at dwhite@santa-cruz.com.