Petaluma looks for road forward after planned tax measure scrapped

It was described as a solution for Petaluma’s crumbling roads, a carefully crafted sales tax measure that even achieved a rare sidestep of ire from an influential organization highly critical of Sonoma County tax policies.

So what’s next, many are asking, after Petaluma’s proposed sales tax increase for roads fell short before it ever hit the ballot?

City officials are taking stock after a late round of polling showed a city tax for road repair failing to attract enough support to pass on the November election, a distinct shift from surveying two years ago that showed such a measure passing with a comfortable margin at the ballot box.

While polling showed 64 percent of voters were likely to approve the measure, results were still below the 66.7 percent margin needed to pass a special tax in California, prompting the city council to hit the brakes on the effort late last month.

As the city’s roads continue to deteriorate – and as traditional outside funding sources for road repair like gas taxes continue to decline – proponents of the tax are now contemplating what it would take to win over those remaining voters in Petaluma.

“I feel like if people really understood the magnitude of the challenge, a few more percentage might be willing to vote for this,” said John Brown, Petaluma’s city manager.

The three-quarter-cent, 20-year measure would have fueled a massive $180 million rejuvenation of Petaluma’s ailing streets, which are considered some of the worst in the San Francisco Bay Area. By contrast, Petaluma’s road repair budget for the current fiscal year is about $3 million.

Poll results showed the strongest support for a three-quarter-cent tax compared to a half-cent tax, which Brown attributed to a general awareness in Petaluma that repairing the city’s ailing roads won’t come cheap. Only 58 percent of responders said they would prefer the smaller tax rate, which also would have fallen short of funding the city’s repair goals.

“I just think that people do get that it’s a really expensive problem, and it’s something that’s going to take time to cure,” he said.

Brown said the city has not tried to directly measure the public appetite for a scaled-down repair plan supported by a smaller tax that might, for example, focus on major roads while allowing smaller neighborhood streets to decline. Such a plan would still leave the city with a bleak challenge while those streets continue to deteriorate, as they pass the turning point where pricey reconstruction is the only option.

Polling has shown the condition of residential streets to be an important issue for residents, he noted.

“To offer a program that doesn’t go far enough, that just continues the deterioration of city streets ... If I’m going to ask a person to pay more in taxes, I feel they should be able to see the results of that in their day-to-day lives,” he said.

Elected officials also said they felt Petaluma residents did not want a plan that would forsake the streets serving their front doors, and cited the 64-percent margin in the recent poll as an indicator of strong public support for a wide-reaching program.

“I think voters would be loathe to support a measure if they are not sure that their street would get the appropriate treatment,” said Councilman Mike Healy, who first kicked off talk of the tax in a 2015 Argus-Courier editorial co-authored by council members Kathy Miller and Gabe Kearney. “I think you’ve got 60 percent of voters who want a real fix, and we need to find a way to get that over the goalpost.”

Councilman Dave King said he still felt the measure that was recently taking shape had a good chance to pass at the ballot box this November, and also cited the polling margin as a sign that the tax was on the right track.

“I think the public wants the whole problem fixed, not just a piecemeal approach. No one is going to be happy paying taxes and watching their street turn to gravel,” he said.

Voter frustrations

Key for the proposed measure was its structuring as a special tax, which means all of the money would go directly to road repair. A 2014 general tax measure for Petaluma roads known as Measure Q failed at the ballot, ostensibly due to public concern that revenue from a general tax can be spent on any government priority.

After his group opposed Measure Q over criticism that the proposal lacked enough of a guarantee for spending, Dan Drummond, executive director of the watchdog group Sonoma County Taxpayers Association, said the new tax taking shape in Petaluma was attracting a more favorable assessment.

“We had expressed our willingness to at least stand down, if not endorse, a special-purpose tax for roads. We could get behind that,” he said.

Since road repairs are funded from sources like gas taxes, a special tax for streets would not have the ability to offset general fund spending and potentially free up money for pensions or other areas, he said. It is a concern that had also informed the group’s opposition to Sonoma County’s Measure A in 2015, a general tax that was pitched as a booster for road repair.

City officials said they took lessons learned from the failure of Measure Q as they developed language for the new tax, which would have included independent oversight and a meticulous spending plan. Polling after the demise of Measure Q showed around 70 percent of voters willing to support a special tax with similar parameters, Healy noted.

Yet the two years after Measure Q have been tumultuous in the world of politics, including a national political narrative that has trickled down to the level of local government, said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University.

“Voters may be frustrated, extremely cynical on government,” he said. “Therefore, the default position is to remain with the status quo.”

Petaluma’s measure would also have sat on a crowded November ballot including several tax proposals, a situation that might sour the opinion of otherwise supportive voters. Special taxes also tend to do worse on a general election ballot, and typically do better during special elections held at other times of the year, he said.

The two-thirds threshold is also a “heavy lift” for a special tax, compared to the simple majority needed to pass a general tax, he said. More than 70 percent of tax increases for “growth-related quality of life measures” like roads and libraries have ultimately passed in the last decade or so in California – just not usually on the first pass.

“You have to go to the ballot a few times,” he said, noting it often takes three attempts to find the “goldilocks” tax structure that voters will support.

As co-founder of a Sonoma County nonprofit focused on promoting more spending on road repair in the county’s unincorporated areas in particular, Craig Harrison, of Save Our Sonoma Roads, noted that the county has spent millions of dollars in new money from its general fund toward road repair since his group launched about five years ago. He questioned generally whether Petaluma might be able to do something similar, but acknowledged that, like the county, it was going to take more than that to have a significant impact on pavement quality.

“I have to say, if 64 percent of Petalumans really would support that (a tax), it really shows that there is public support out there for fixing the roads and taxing themselves to do it,” he said.

King, though, argued that the city’s discretionary money was stretched thin.

“For anybody who thinks the city has money under the seat cushions that it’s holding onto, I invite them to borrow the budget, go through it and see if they come up with something that’s workable. I’d like to hear it,” he said.

Sacramento solution

Other developments over the next few years may well impact the future viability of a tax measure in Petaluma.

In 2000, California voters passed an amendment to the state constitution that lowered the tax threshold for a school facilities bond from two-thirds to 55 percent. Talk of a similar change lowering the threshold for transportation-related special taxes has largely hit a political deadlock between the state legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown, McCuan said.

Though a “modified supermajority” is likely the shape of things to come in California, proponents of a Petaluma tax shouldn’t hold their breath, he said.

“I don’t see that relief coming to Petaluma any time soon,” he said.

Efforts to modify the formula of the state’s gas tax may also give Petaluma a boost, but those talks have also largely hit a wall for the time being, McCuan said.

Closer to home, Healy, a former Petaluma representative at the Sonoma County Transportation Authority, said there could be an effort in the next two years to pass an extension to the countywide, quarter-cent transportation sales tax, Measure M. The tax would likely include a dispensation to Petaluma for road repair, which could offset what the city needs to bridge the gap.

“There will probably be a big component in there for road repair countywide,” he said. The taxes “could be put together, and be complementary.”

Strategy going forward

In the weeks following the shelving of the tax, Brown, the city manager, said no formal strategy exists to conduct further public outreach before the end of the year. Yet informal efforts are ongoing, including a community meeting this week were Brown said he planned to discuss the tax.

Brown and others maintained that the city got the parameters right this time around, and said there was no current belief that tweaking the tax would attract a greater level of public support. He said the city’s best chance to win over remaining voters was through public education.

A special tax can go to the ballot outside of a general election, leaving the question of timing relatively open. Yet King said he saw no reason to wait while Petaluma’s roads continued to worsen.

“I’m hoping we entertain it – not through polling, but through a vote – in 2017,” he said. “I wanted them fixed before I was elected. When I wrote out my platform when I was going to run, the first thing I put was road repair.”

(Contact Eric Gneckow at eric.gneckow@arguscourier.com. On Twitter @Eric_Reports.)