With the deadline looming to place a half-cent sales-tax increase on the November ballot, the City Council voted 6-2 on Wednesday to put the measure before voters. The ordinance involves a five-year hike in local sales tax and is tied to various financial reform measures. “It\u2019s kind of a compromise and an agreement,” said Darren Pudgil, a spokesman with Mayor Jerry Sanders\u2019 office. “We know that reforms alone will not enable us to protect and restore city services, so it\u2019s essentially reforms before revenue. It\u2019s a combination package.” The reforms tied to the potential sales-tax raise include changes to retirement plans for city officials, a second-tier pension plan for firefighters and kickstarting the process to privatize the city\u2019s information technology services and the Miramar Landfill. Pudgil said the proposed ballot measure would require the city to meet those reforms before any money is collected from the sales tax increase. “It\u2019s a very comprehensive reform package that must be put in place,” Pudgil said. The City Council has held three special hearings in a five-day span to discuss the increase. At the most recent meeting yesterday, the council voted to approve a revised version of the ordinance presented by the city attorney. With the council approval, the proposed sales-tax hike will now be put before voters on Nov. 2. Pudgil said the five-year temporary tax would raise an estimated $103 million per year that the city would put toward city services, including fire, police and street resurfacing. “It will be used to eliminate the rolling fire brownouts and it will be used to restore and protect essential city services,” Pudgil said. District 2 City Councilman Kevin Faulconer voted against placing the sales-tax increase on the ballot, along with District 5 Councilman Carl DeMaio. Faulconer said the measure as presented doesn\u2019t present significant or guaranteed savings to citizens. “The reforms in this tax proposal are a wish list. We need an action list,” Faulconer said in a statement. “San Diegans need to know how much money the city will save before we ask them for more.”<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With the deadline looming to place a half-cent sales-tax increase on the November ballot, the City Council voted 6-2 on Wednesday to put the measure before voters. The ordinance involves a five-year hike in local sales tax and is tied to various financial reform measures. “It\u2019s kind of a compromise and an agreement,” said Darren […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"City Council puts sales-tax hike measure on ballot","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551,11593],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news","category-no-images"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}