City workers voice legitimate concerns

<p>Petaluma’s public employee unions have joined a growing chorus urging city leaders to take a more committed approach to generating badly needed sales and property tax revenues by approving desirable and long-delayed retail development projects.</p><!-- Nothing to do. The paragraph has already been output --><p>For years, Petaluma’s public employee unions have quietly voiced concerns regarding the importance of plugging the city’s gaping retail sales tax hole that was officially quantified in a 2003 city report. But following a series of apparently unproductive individual meetings with members of the City Council this summer, the unions took the unprecedented step of meeting with Petaluma Area Chamber of Commerce officials to discuss their shared apprehensions about the city’s precipitously declining tax revenues and ongoing failure to expand and diversify Petaluma’s weak retail sector.</p><p>In a joint statement to chamber officials from unions representing 97 percent of the city’s nearly 300 employees, workers said the “lack of revenue seriously threatens the ability of city staff to provide services and programs that residents and businesses have come to expect and depend upon ... We feel it is the responsibility of the council to provide every opportunity for retail; to find ways now to plug the retail leakage and to improve the economic and financial health and vitality of the city.”</p><p>Petaluma’s rank-and-file employees have clearly lost confidence in their bosses’ commitment to implementing the goals in the city’s new General Plan, specifically those aimed at strengthening Petaluma’s economy, job base and fiscal health. Regarding the city’s plans to commission an Economic Development Strategic Plan, union members asked, “Will this just be another study that sits on the shelf?” </p><p>In response to the workers’ concerns, Mayor Pamela Torliatt said last week that boosting sales tax “is exactly what this council has been pursuing,” adding that the council is committed to streamlining the review of the Target shopping center proposal, now well into its sixth year of planning evaluation. </p><p>Torliatt’s assertions, however, appear to conflict with many statements from the council majority. </p><p>Last spring, following the release of two lengthy reports documenting the many significant economic and fiscal benefits of the long-awaited Target shopping center and another on North McDowell Boulevard anchored by a home improvement store, members of the council’s majority reacted critically. They ignored the wealth of information affirming the city’s overall retail weakness and showing the two projects would provide millions of dollars in desperately needed property and sales tax revenues along with a net increase of 1,100 permanent jobs and 700 temporary construction jobs. Majority council members expressed dissatisfaction with the reports’ unerring conclusions that the projects would, in fact, represent a net positive economic and fiscal gain for the city. </p><p>Last week, Torliatt suddenly suggested banning a garden center from the proposed Target store, adding that she’d like to create an exclusive “hardware/lumber yard” district atop the Target center site, somehow squeeze a Friedman’s Home Improvement store into the development, and thereby prevent lumber yards from locating anywhere else in a city that currently has none and used to support three. It’s entirely unclear whether Friedman’s wants or could afford to open a store alongside a Target (talk about mixed use), or how long it would take to redesign the project and submit a revised environmental impact report even if they did. </p><p>We’re hard pressed to see how such inept attempts to micromanage this proposed retail development will somehow streamline its approval and construction, and empathize with city employees whose very livelihoods and ability to provide critical public services are threatened by such misguided leadership.</p>