WHY I OPPOSE THE POLICE PARCEL TAX BALLOT MEASURE

July 14, 2008

CITY Hall should clean up its own house, before it taxes yours

Dear friend and neighbor,

There is no way that I can in good conscience support the police services parcel taxes proposed by the Mayor and other council members for the November ballot. The simple reason is that until we here at city hall get our own house in order, we should not be raising taxes on your house.

I do not believe that we have earned your confidence in our fiscal responsibility to ask you for more money for police services.  We have yet to even fully implement Measure Y and we have been collecting those taxes since 2005.  I am currently working on three critical reform measures to "clean house" including a whistleblower ordinance, an anti-nepotism ordinance and a hiring practices audit.  think we must make a determined effort to pay for increased police services with the money you already give us. Given that we are experiencing a budget deficit, doing more with less and prioritizing spending are more critical than ever.

In fact, I encourage you to defeat any City parcel tax measure put on the ballot. I need you to help me send a strong message to everyone here in City Hall that we need to clean up our own house first. The recent controversy over the voting process with the Landscape and Lighting Assessment District (LLAD) also raises serious concerns that I will express fully at the appropriate time.

All city leaders need to roll up their sleeves to cut unnecessary spending, conduct performance audits of all departments, implement performance standards and practices to improve efficiency, and negotiate effectively with our unions to ensure City employees get a good day's pay for a good day's work.  With these efforts, we can deliver higher quality services to you without raising your taxes.

For several years, I have emphasized reform within city government, before it became popular to do so. I even made accountability a cornerstone of my mayoral campaign. But it wasn't until now, because of the recent events at City Hall, that we are getting united around this cause: true government reform that leads to responsible use of our tax dollars.  

I have pushed for performance audits of all city departments, but the bureaucracy has aggressively pushed back. The opposition to my re-election campaign by Local Union 1021 representing city employees was grounded in resentment of my efforts to bring accountability to the city bureaucracy.  I have pushed for investigations of wasteful spending by city agencies, individuals, and city contractors. I have been pushing to install GPS equipment in all city vehicles, especially police and fire, to ensure that we manage our resources and be able to effectively respond to emergencies.    

In this moment of public outcry, several elected officials including me are putting reform proposals forward. We can't allow any excuses such as cost or past practices or other delay tactics to stop the immediate implementation of these reforms. You must also hold us all accountable to see reform efforts through after the excitement has died down.

Let us also work together to grow our budget through economic growth so we don't have to continually pay more taxes. With leadership and vision, I believe it is possible to have more police, more money for affordable housing, improved parks, and improved services to seniors and youth, without constantly raising our taxes.

I ask you to hold us accountable as your leaders, and force us to get our own house in order, before we tax yours again.

Sincerely,
Ignacio De La Fuente

P.S. Thank you to the 533 of you took my on-line survey on the proposed police tax, and the hundreds of you who left heartfelt and informative comments. Only 31.3% of you said you would support the proposed tax as initially proposed (the proposal has been modified since that time). See the survey results and comments here.