By Jack Humphreville, Neighborhood Council Budget Advocate
The Street Tax will cost an average of $150 million a year over the next thirty years.
Add the permanent Sales Tax of $200 million a year and the Storm Water Tax of $100 million (our share), we are getting slammed for $450 million.
We have already been hit up for the mayor’s tripling of the Trash Tax ($200 million), an additional $100 million for the DWP Transfer Fee as the tax was increased to 8% from 5%, the Communication Users Tax ($250 million); the Prop 30 sales tax ($100 million is our share), and Measure R ($200 million our share). This totals $850 million.
So we are at $1.3 billion for Angelenos and this does not include the higher income taxes.
Nor does it include that over the next 10 years, sewer rates are going up 77% and DWP rates are expected to double. That would increase that the Transfer Fee by another $250 million.
At the same time, the City Council has not made any real pension or work place reforms that will eliminate the Structural Deficit.
To save the City from insolvency, the City Council needs to place on the ballot a charter amendment that will require the City to LIVE WITHIN ITS MEANS. This would mandate that the City develop and adhere to a Five Year Financial Plan, pass two year balanced budgets based on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, and over the next ten years, fix our streets and the rest of our infrastructure and fully fund our pension plans.
Ron, you did not include this important excerpt from Humpreville’s article in Citywatch “And why have our streets been underfunded?
Very simply, our self-serving Elected Elite short changed our streets and sidewalks (and every other City program and service) to finance the $1.3 billion increase in labor costs over the last seven years”.
They’ll never draft a ballot measure the force them to live within their means; it’s so much easier to not think about proper budgeting and just continue to soak us for more money.
What they might do is draft a measure that automatically makes out all of our paychecks, Social Security checks, retirement benefits and life insurance policies to them, and if there’s any left over they’ll write us an eensy-weesy check for us to live on in poverty — and we still won’t have fixed streets, enough police and fire or anything else that makes for a first-class city.
The only way to bring the chuckleheads that sit around the toilet seat in City Hall to the table is to say no to the sales tax increase, the Street Tax, and the County’s sneaky vote by mail Storm Water Tax.
The issue is reform. No Reform. No New Taxes.