Taxes?
The possibility of new taxes has returned to Redlands. City Council members and high-level staffers gathered during the evening for a goal-setting workshop, during which City Manager N. Enrique Martinez lamented that his colleagues were more interested in naming things they wanted to do (like build a new police station) than looking for new ways to pay for city business.
"I didn't see anything about going to the public. We need to raise fees," Martinez said. "We can't do this all by balancing the budget."
After some discussion, Councilman Jerry Bean suggested that City Hall explore the possibility of collecting more revenue by raising Redlands' paramedic tax. Bean's remark seemed wasn't so much a specific proposal to increase that levy than an indication of his willingness to increase taxes if citizens would agree that City Hall needs more cash.
"That should be a major objective, to look for revenue streams that would be palatable to the public," he said.
The City Council recently nixed an unpopular proposal that would have collected new revenues through a water rate hike (possibly as high as 15 percent). The complicated reasoning behind that proposal centered around Martinez's contention that a decades-old accounting error meant that the city's water utility owed money to the general fund; thus new water revenues could have been transferred to the general fund.
Bean, a fiscal conservative, strongly opposed that idea on the basis of his view that Martinez had essentially proposed a stealth tax. However, during that controversy, Bean never said he was adamantly opposed to new taxes. His insistence was that City Hall should be more straightforward in asking Redlanders for money. New taxes require a public vote, something that would not have been required if the above-mentioned water rate proposal went forward.
Councilmembers Mick Gallagher and Pat Gilbreath sounded reluctant to go forward with new taxes. Both stressed the idea that City Hall has some work to do before Redlanders would be willing to open their pocketbooks.
"We've got to build the trust margin," Gilbreath said. "One year is not going to do it. They're still watching us."
Martinez became City Manager in April. Since then, he convinced the council to pass a balanced budget law and shepherded through a balanced budget after a five-year period during which the council used savings to pay for city business while allowing planned expenses to exceed revenues.
In a similar workshop held about 11 months ago, Martinez publicly broached the possibility of new taxes. Redlanders debated proposals to hike sales and bed taxes over the summer while also discussing a proposal create a new business license tax for distribution centers.
Of those three proposals, only the distribution center tax made it onto the ballot. City voters ratified the tax in November.