How Will You Vote on the Utility Tax in November?

Kalimah Salahuddin has been dependent on Pacifica’s public resources since she’s been a resident of the city.

As a single mother of three, there were times when she couldn’t meet rent. During those times, the Pacifica Resource Center provided her a temporary home to get her back on her feet.

When her kids walk home every day after school, she enjoys the peace of mind knowing that they’re traveling through a safe community sustained by the Pacifica Police Department.

The last thing she wants is to see those services disappear. So, when the vote on the expansion of the Utility Users Tax (UUT) appears on the ballot this November, she will vote yes on expanding the current 6.5 percent tax to telecommunication services in Pacifica.

“Really it comes down to: What do we want the city to be? What are without these significant services?” Salahuddin said. “And then: What kind of sacrifices are we willing to make in order to have that community that we, I feel, deserve?”

The services and the UUT have become hot topics in Pacifica as of late. There have been debates on whether or not this tax will be helpful or not to citizens of Pacifica, as expressed by residents in the comments section of a recent article on Patch about the phone tax.

“Not only do I have to pay monopoly prices for Internet service but now Pacifica's ruling elite feels entitled to an additional 6.5 (percent) of that usury,” Curtis Philips wrote on that article. “The City of Pacifica now plots ways to get money from its citizens, instead of finding ways to peg public employee salaries, vacations, health benefits, and pensions to something even remotely akin to what its private-sector citizens earn.”

Elizabeth Monticue agreed.

“We don't need more taxes,” Monticue wrote. “We are being taxed and taxed and taxed, and not seeing much in return. As has been stated already, many of us have had stagnant income for far too long. We can't tax our employers for more!”

But Salahuddin, the campaign manager for “Support Pacifica’s Future,” says it will be helpful to citizens in more ways than one. If passed, the tax should halt significant reductions to both of Pacifica’s police and fire departments, maybe even saving the police department as a whole, she said.

Beyond that, it’s aimed to allocate money toward the library, the Pacifica Resource Center, the Meals on Wheels program, the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) after school program and street maintenance, Salahuddin said.

The individual cost to per citizen is hard to estimate, though.

“I am a single parent, I only have one income, I have three kids. We all have cell phones, so this is going to hit me hard,” she said. “But I think $11 a month or however much people are going to be asked to pay really is a small amount when you think about the eservices you’re provided that are able to prevent things that are going to be more expensive in the long run.”

Those funds will be allocated to the city’s general fund, not a specific fund that will guarantee its allocation toward those services. However, that’s usually the case in most communities, Salahuddin said.

“That’s no different than any other city on any other tax measure; the money always goes into the general fund,” she said. “Then, those funds are allocated to the specific programs or departments that were focused on in the campaign.”

Regardless of where the money goes, it should raise a bit more than $1 million a year for services and programs, Salahuddin said. And while this is another tax, she said that this is more of a step to help aid the city while it searches for alternatives for revenue. It’s trying to gain a better fiscal base so it doesn’t have to continually reach out to the community for funds, she said.

“I think that right now we have a very forward thinking city council that is tying to find other revenue streams in order to support the city,” she said. “We just need to help them out so they can get there. That doesn’t happen over night.”

How will you vote on the utility tax in November?