OPINION: Death of Petaluma’s street tax disappointing

It is said that nothing is certain in life except death and taxes. But what are we to make about the death of a proposed tax to repair Petaluma’s badly dilapidated streets which, until last week, seemed certain to be on the ballot this fall?

For several months, city officials have been conducting polling to determine whether a three-quarter-cent sales tax measure dedicated exclusively to repairing local roads would earn voter approval. But the proposed tax died a quiet death at a city council meeting last week after polling showed that the measure would not earn the requisite two-thirds majority approval.

This is very disappointing news for Petaluma residents, especially since the sales tax increase would have raised millions of dollars to repair the city’s crumbling streets. Petaluma leaders apparently did not want to waste money campaigning for what they believed would be a doomed ballot measure, so any hope of solving the problem any time soon was extinguished.

City leaders were pursuing the right approach in this effort by proposing a special tax, which would have earmarked the revenue specifically for street repair, and they sought public input. As proposed, the measure would have raised nearly $180 million over 20 years. That revenue would have transformed Petaluma’s street network from nearly the worst in the Bay Area to one of the best within the first eight years of the measure.

The key challenge with passing special taxes, however, is the high voter threshold they must overcome. While general taxes require a simple majority to pass, special taxes need two-thirds voter support. The city had tried a one-cent general sales tax two years ago, and voters gave it an extraordinarily big thumbs down, so the specific tax was clearly the best way to go.

Yet polling showed that a three-quarter-cent sales tax increase - the funding level required to fully rebuild and repair the city’s entire street network - would get just 64 percent support, still below the two-thirds barrier.

Puzzlingly, city officials say that only 58 percent of respondents supported a half-cent sales tax to do the job. It’s not entirely clear why poll respondents felt less inclined to approve a lower tax rate to repair roads; $120 million would certainly have gone a very long way to solving a problem that has plagued this community for nearly 20 years. Was there a problem in the polling, or did respondents feel that if they could not get all the roads fixed perfectly with a half-cent tax increase, it was not worth their support? It’s unclear.

But one thing is certain: The high bar for approving special taxes in California discourages municipalities from putting them forward, and the threshold should be lowered. We encourage state lawmakers to continue their work on crafting a statewide ballot initiative to lower the voter threshold for special taxes from 67 to 55 percent, the same support required to pass school bonds.

Until that time, city officials should get busy working on an alternate strategy. Over the years, the singular biggest public concern about municipal government services is the very poor condition of Petaluma’s roads. Yet there seems to be a disconnect between what residents say they want and what some are willing to support.

We’ve observed that some people believe, mistakenly, that the city has the money to fix the streets but spends it on something else.

The reality is that road repair has always been funded through taxes on gasoline, not property taxes or any other method. Taxing drivers at the pump has been the most equitable way of funding our streets since the more gas motorists buy, the more wear and tear they do to the pavement.

But recently, cars have become more fuel efficient, and some cars, like electric vehicles, don’t use any gas at all. Couple this with a gas tax that is not pegged to inflation and has not been raised in two decades, and suddenly we have a funding stream that cannot support the rising cost of labor and materials for road repair.

Until there is a solution to the gas tax quandary, the only way that cities and counties will be able to afford to fix their roads is through a local funding source, and a sales tax provides the best opportunity.

But without a public vote on such a measure, street conditions in Petaluma will only get worse.