Tamalpais Union High School District is pushing a blockbuster $450 million facilities improvement bond for the 2018 ballot. Its effort will cost homeowners $30 per $100,000 of their property’s assessed valuation, or an annual average of $300 per residential parcel.
Tam’s Board of Trustees is also considering complementing the bond with a 2020 parcel tax for operating expenses.
If that wasn’t enough, Marin County’s transportation agency will likely place a measure on the 2018 ballot continuing its current half-cent sales tax and increasing it by one-quarter cent.
In 2018, Marin along with other Bay Area counties will see Regional Measure 3 seeking approval for a $3-per-vehicle toll increase for travel across all bay toll bridges except the independently run Golden Gate Bridge.
Recall that a toll increase is a tax hike by another name.
Jumping the gun is Larkspur, which is sponsoring a November ballot measure to continue and increase its street-improvement sales tax to three-quarters of a cent. That’ll bring the city’s sales tax rate to 9 percent, nudging against the statewide 9.25 percent sales tax cap.
These collective efforts will kill Marin’s golden goose — the willingness of Marin voters to generously support tax measures which the public believes will lead to community improvements.
Local and regional officials are going too far, too fast.
The only practical route to slow down the tax-increase gold rush is a unified “Just Vote No” campaign on all 2017-18 tax measures. Once the message is out that Marinites’ willingness to tax themselves has limits, these efforts can return in future years with greater transparency and more modest ambitions.
Part of the push behind these tax increases is the impact from California’s grossly unfunded public employee pensions. Money that should have gone for roads, public transit and new high schools was syphoned off to pay the agencies’ rapidly increasing pension debts.
That leaves scant resources for long-term infrastructure improvements or even ongoing maintenance.
The final option to fund admittedly needed improvements is bonding funded by parcel taxes and increasing ever-more regressive sales taxes.
My sympathies are with local officials who find themselves in a predicament created by past governing boards’ generosity. That doesn’t eliminate the reality that the best way to communicate “enough-is-enough” is to just vote no.
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SMART’s sleek two- and three-car train sets were a hit during the mid-summer public trips up and down Marin and Sonoma counties.
Many of the trips pushed against the limits of the train’s standing-room capacity. Of course, rides were free, but the public’s curiosity is undeniable.
We’ll soon see how many become paying passengers.
One traditional feature that many rail cars sport is that each is named. In many locales, passenger cars are named after online communities, local landmarks and historic figures.
Why not get the North Bay’s children involved?
Let’s have a friendly competition among Marin and Sonoma grade school children to name SMART’s rail cars.
Think of riding to work in cars named City of Novato, Jack London, Redwood Empire or Valley of the Moon. Perhaps one could be Snoopy or Charlie Brown in memory of Santa Rosa’s Charles Schulz.
I’d reserve one car for a special honor. The late Robert Roumiguiere, a longtime Marin supervisor, was the original Marin-Sonoma commuter rail advocate.
The early 1980s was a different time when the idea of commuting by rail was bipartisan. Unimaginable now, but Roumiguiere, then one of Marin’s most powerful elected officials, was a business-oriented Gov. Ronald Reagan appointee to Marin’s board.
Rarely partisan, the pragmatic Roumiguiere was first-rate. His leadership initiating SMART deserves to be noted by this modest cost-free gesture.
Columnist Dick Spotswood of Mill Valley writes about local issues on Wednesdays and Sundays in the IJ. Email him at spotswood@comcast.net.