
Super Sunday San Diego: Super Meltdown? Please provide some solutions.
Per the San Diego Reader, 14 of San Diego County’s 18 cities are attempting to manage upside down budgets, with nine having shortfalls in the millions.
Since that Jan. 21 story, the Chula Vista City Council has voted 4-1 to conduct a May mail ballot for a one percent sales tax increase. John McCann was the lone nay vote. The special election will cost the region’s second largest city $250,000.
Chula Vista joinsthreeother citieswith recent local sales taxes measures, El Cajon, La Mesa and National City, all of them passing.
Don’t expect any of this to change soon. Underlying the fiscal problems is a dysfunctional system in which cities must rely mostly on sales tax revenue while the bulk of the locally-generated property taxes flow into state coffers. Anytime the economy turns sour and sales taxes are down as a result, municipalities suffer, while Californiagovernment continues to have its own blind-to-reality problems, often resulting in further State actions to transfer local monies to cover its fiscal ineptitude.
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