Measure E Doing Its Job: City Services, Employees Spared

Nearing the two-year mark of the narrow passage of Measure E — which garnered 55 percent of the vote in a June 2010 special election — officials say the half-cent sales tax measure is helping retain or reinstate a slew of city services.

The five-year 9.5 sales tax rate, which sunsets in June 2015, has staved off deeper cuts to employee positions, salaries and benefits, it's kept in place services such as police, street and pothole repair and parks maintenance and it's enabled the re-opening of City Hall on Fridays, for example.

City Manager Gabe Gonzalez says the city has hit Measure E revenue projections, which were set to take in between $2.4 and $2.8 million each year. From October 2010 till June 2011, latest numbers available show that over the eight-month period, .

That's roughly a million under projections, but Gonzalez is quick to point out that it the numbers aren't showing a full year's revenue.

"We exceeded our projections in the first year," he says. "We haven't met our need for services 100 percent, but it's helped fill gaps."

, infrastructure continues to crumble at recreation facilities and recently, the city decided to .

Gonzalez touted the city's , which hovers just above $400,000. That's down from $6 million at the passage of Measure E in 2010. Last year alone, in 2011, the city's operating budget deficit varied between $2.9 and $2.4 million.

But he acknowledges the need for more economic development, which translates into filling the and drawing interest to the masses of shuttered businesses. The official vacancy rate today is officially 43 percent, but that doesn't include the State Farm campus.

Officials said there's been a wave of requests into the , and Latitude — but nothing serious.

"There’s a lot of inquiries, but given the current state of economy, nothing real," Gonzalez said, while emphasizing the need to work with private companies and developers.

"What we do is provide information on what the city's plans are, with regard to growth in specific areas," he added. "We're obviously looking at businesses that are high-yield in terms of generating sales taxes — that we're workign on. I see it as a partnership with private industry."

Problems cited during the passage of Measure E are still relevant. The city has officially qutoed "existing and immediate funding crisis, which is the result of factors largely outside of its control, including national economic trends, rapid increases in the cost of employee retirement and health insurance benefits, decreases in revenue from existing taxes and fees, increases in charges by the County of Sonoma, and unpredictable state takeaways of local revenue."

Not even mentioning the loss of redevelopment funds for the 400-plus municipalities statwide who use the funds in the name of economic development and erradicating blight. The city is moving through the process of eliminating its agency. Stay tuned for a feature this week on that important issue.

While proponents of Measure E in 2010 blatantly said that if it wasn't passed, the city would become a hotbed for crime and degradation, opponents of Measure E at the time argued that "gross overspending is the true cause of the financial problems."

Read the full text of Measure E here.