Editor,
City Council is once again going to spend your tax dollars like drunken sailors. They are developing a 2018 ballot measure for a citywide general obligation bond to fund undergrounding utilities on Laguna Canyon Road and both North and South Coast Highway. That, and undergrounding in neighborhoods via a tax assessment per neighborhood, is estimated to cost $200 million.
So what does City Council do? Hire consultants of course for $242,000 to determine how to sell it to the public and get it passed. This feasibility study is, and I quote from the Indy, “designed to determine quickly what is required to build support for a local funding measure and its timing.”
Talk about bias; they are asking them how to get us to agree because Big Brother City Council knows what’s best for us.
Are we not smart enough to make an informed decision? Wait; you won’t get all the facts, only the ones they want you to see so you will vote for it. They will survey 500 residents to see how best to get you to say yes. 500 residents is .02% of the Laguna population. Enough to gauge support? Or what the best appeal is to get you to agree to a tax on property, which may no longer be deductible under the new tax law? The company, TBWB Strategies, specializes in winning public finance measures – the same folks who got you to vote yes on the bed tax hike. Well, then it was visitors being taxed. Now it’s us and they will use the same tactics – obfuscation and sleight of hand – to get you to say please tax me more.
This bond is for $34 to $50 million. They don’t even know the cost. Care to bet it will go higher? How about they tighten their belt and start with what they can cut if they want to get this done? Or, let’s discuss the most important need, Laguna Canyon Road. Why do we need to fund North and South Coast Highway? How many cars have hit utility poles on that road?
City Council stop trying to pull the wool over our eyes to just keep taxing us. Be responsible with our money and look at need first and where you can get the money to do what you want to do without putting your hand in our pocket again.
Michèle Monda, Laguna Beach
Any survey should be limited to property owners, not voters. Property owners will pay for any bond not voters. There are Laguna Beach property owners who don’t even vote here but have an electric meter and will foot the bill for any bond tacked on to the property tax.
Telephone polling, a familiar practice by outside consultants, here’s one done in 2012: https://lagunastreets.blogspot.com/2012/05/citizen-survey-below-fold.html
Thanks Michele for waking up the residents. Here we go again, being manipulated by an advertising blitz paid for by our own money. The only thing this city council and city manager now how to do is spend, spend, spend, and take away our rights. Don’t feed the beast. @JT Price, good point.