How Should Chula Vista Spend Its Half-Cent Sales Tax Increase?

Voters and Chula Vista did something that San Diego County really do. They approved a tax increase. 67% of Chula Vista voters approved measure P a half cent sales tax to pay for infrastructure repair. Tonight the Chula Vista city Council will consider spending priorities and oversight of the $165 million tenured sales tax boost is expected to generate. Joining me is Chula Vista Mayor Mary Casillas Salas, Mayor, Chula Vista . Welcome to the program. Thank you. What did you do right and Chula Vista to convince more than two thirds of the voters to raise the sales tax. We prepared well and we undertook a two-year study of all our assets and assign a condition based on the condition of the asset. We took inventory of our streets, our public facilities, our libraries, our park and recreation areas, the equipment we have for the police fleet and were able to have a comprehensive study and able to put all that information and make this a transparent process to where our citizens could go on our website and see where the expenditures were needed. We also surveyed the community. We ask them what do you think are the most pressing needs in the city of Chula Vista. Coincidentally their priorities were the same as the priorities where we needed to spend the money. You know that San Diego's have felt increase for measure a. It failed to get two thirds approval. These seat significant differences between those two proposals and the way they were presented to voters? We do not spend the money that they did on a campaign for it. What it was is we had united support for it so there was little opposition to the measure. We were able to work with our community. I think also our community has seen over time how responsible the city of Chula Vista is with its finances. We came out of a terrible recession and we cut our staff by one third. We're still one of the lowest staffing ratios in the County of San Diego. We have about less than 1000 employees and we have over 268,000 residents. We formed our pension, tighten our belts and became efficient. I think all those reforms were not lost on the voter. Is an example of some of the crucial infrastructure repairs that measure P funding will help fix. A lot of it goes to public safety. We will be replacing our police cars, fire engines. We will rebill to fire stations and building a new one. We will be spending $7.5 million on renewing our sports fields. Those are heavily used by our community. Our streets and road repairs are a priority. We will be spending a lot of money initially to address these visible critical needs. What does the city Council have to do tonight? There's an idea of making a financing plan to go along with measure P. What do they have to do to get the ball rolling? Tonight we will be formalizing the expenditure plan. Before when it was on the ballot it was a draft. Tonight we will be formalizing the expenditure plan. Also we will be doing a $3.2 million budget amendment to be able to get these projects going out of the gate. We will also authorize our city staff to go out and contract for a revenue bond for $50 million so we can get these big projects going quickly. As you say there was not a lot of criticism of measure P. But there was some. What that was about is that this is a general tax with no guarantees on how the money will be spent. How do you make sure the money gets spent on what voters were told it would pay for? First of all caught you are right has it was a general tax. Now with the expenditure plan, we have a vehicle to establish a citizens oversight commission to make sure they review the money that is coming in. There will be a separate line item on the budget that shows all the monies coming in from the sales tax revenue and the expenditure and our oversight commission will be reviewing that every year. In addition with a $50 million revenue bond that doesn't lock in the money for specific projects. It cannot be spent for anything else. I think the voters trusted us and I think it would be foolhardy for any councilmember to try to undo what was such a mandate to us and where the public wanted us to spend the money. Both Chula Vista and the city of San Diego have a backlog of infrastructure repairs. How does this situation developed? Is it a question of not wanting to spend money on fixing streets and structures? In addition to the recession which hit all cities especially the city of Chula Vista in the depths of recession we had one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation. We did the reform. In addition to the recession and coming out of the recession, revenue streams have change coming into the cities. What you are seeing now 30% of all retail sales are done online so there's a great deal of loss of sales tax revenue that is important to cities. Also this -- state going to take away the -- agencies and Weise to get 100% of the tax increment now we get $.08-$.12 on every dollar that is collected. The state away our redevelopment agency. They took away our vehicle license fees. Also the gas tax is a diminishing stream of revenue because of fuel efficiency. What's happening is not only city of San Diego and city of Chula Vista experiencing this change of revenue stream that we have to address -- now with the election that happened I think there's now 200 or more cities in the state of California that have their own sales tax measure that they implemented and the reason being is cities are beginning to realize we can't count on the state and we can't count on the federal government so more and more local governments are taking these into their hands. Tonight the city of Chula Vista tries to formalize its financing plan for its infrastructure. I've been speaking with tule -- Chula Vista Mayor Mary Casillas Salas. Thank you so much. They get to the voters of Chula Vista. -- Thank you to the voters of Chula Vista.