June 21, 2002

Poll predicts victory for city utility tax backers

Mid-election ‘surprises’ harder to predict

By DAN WHITE
Sentinel staff writer

SANTA CRUZ — Most Santa Cruzans would keep the city’s 7 percent utility tax if they had to vote right now, according to a poll taken this past weekend.

Local tax foes collected enough signatures to put the utility tax, which channels an estimated $8.5 million to the city’s general fund annually, to the November ballot, saying it harms the elderly and poor while propping up "pork" programs.

The $40 million general fund supports public safety, parks and recreation, street maintenance and public works.

Strikingly, the same poll suggests residents have diminished faith in city government, with a rising percentage of respondents saying the city is doing an "only fair" or "poor" job.

The 400 randomly selected respondents were reluctant to see the city make significant cuts in any programs, especially public safety.

Assistant City Manager Martin Bernal said the results are encouraging to utility-tax supporters. But he cautioned that the poll was only a snapshot.

"This is an indicator of how people feel about (the utility tax) now," Bernal said. "There could be other variables that change it. I don’t see what that would be, but it’s always possible."

Bernal also said polls don’t account for surprises that can surface in political campaigns. Two years ago a poll suggested victory for supporters of Measure U, which would have increased the transient occupancy tax to fund a year- round family homeless shelter. Measure U failed.

A majority voted for it, but not the required 75 percent.

Bernal said the earlier poll could not have anticipated the hotel industry waging an aggressive campaign against the measure.

According to the latest poll, 49 percent of voters would keep the utility tax, while 34 percent would dump it. Later in the poll, the same question was posed again — this time after giving respondents 30 questions linking utility tax elimination to heavy cuts in city services, from school crossing-guard programs to homeless services, police patrols in downtown Santa Cruz and reduced traffic enforcement.

The second time the question was posed, 72 percent voted to preserve the tax and only 22 voted to dump it.

The city paid San Francisco-based pollster Bregman and Associates $18,000 to do the poll.

Utility tax foe Steve Hartman has accused the pollsters of asking leading questions to influence results, by scaring people into making a link between tax repeal and devastating cuts in city services.

Hartman and supporters maintain that much of the budget could be trimmed painlessly to eliminate fluff. Hartman, who was polled himself, said several people have told him they lied to please the pollsters "because they felt intimidated."

On Cooper Street downtown on Thursday afternoon, a half-dozen Santa Cruzans were mostly undecided about the tax. One woman, who asked not to be identified, said she would probably vote to keep the tax, but felt the tax should be levied on a sliding scale so small-scale customers, especially those in low-income brackets, could pay less.

Karen Cooper, who works in finance, said she’d probably vote "to get rid of it. I have no idea what it goes to. Does it help schools? Does it pay for programs I don’t care for?"

If the polling results are to be believed, liking city leaders may not be a prerequisite for voting to preserve the utility tax.

In a 1998 poll by the same company, 55 percent thought the government was doing a good-to-excellent job, but the figure slipped to 51 percent in 2000.

Over that same period, the percentage who thought the city was doing a fair-to-lousy job jumped from 42 to 45 percent.

In the latest poll, just 44 percent said the city government was doing a good to excellent job and 53 percent said the city was doing an "only fair" to poor job.

In March, 55 percent of county voters passed Measure L, dumping the county’s 7 percent utility tax that channeled about $10 million into the budget annually. The strongest support for repeal was in the unincorporated areas, where the tax is levied.

In Santa Cruz, where local residents don’t pay the tax but benefit from some of the services it funds, 55 percent voted to keep the tax.

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