Features

Berkeley City Council quietly put the lid on the coffin of the parcel tax Tuesday night, voting 5-2 to keep it off the March 2004 ballot. 

But while that decision was no surprise—coming, as it did, a day after Mayor Tom Bates announced plans to withdraw support for his own proposal—Bates unexpectedly took the opportunity to accuse the Berkeley Firefighters Local of reneging on an earlier indication that they were supporting the parcel tax. 

In the meantime, City Manager Phil Kamlarz announced that he would present preliminary plans to close Berkeley’s budget deficit at Council’s Dec. 16 meeting. 

Council passed a broad budget crisis recovery strategy proposal co-sponsored by Bates and councilmembers Gordon Wozniak, Linda Maio, and Miriam Hawley that calls for such belt-tightening measures as a “hard hiring freeze” for city employees and a moratorium on all new city expenditures. 

Council also directed City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque to investigate whether Berkeley should join in a lawsuit against Gov. Schwarzenegger for lowering the state Vehicle License Fee (VLF). Money collected by the Department of Motor Vehicles from the VLF has been distributed to California cities and counties, all of which expect to take a huge financial hit from the governor’s action. 

Bates said that both San Diego and Santa Clara counties have announced lawsuits against the State of California for the governor’s actions, while the California League of Cities is also considering similar action. 

At the same meeting, Council voted to place all of the electoral change measures on the March 2004 ballot, including adding filing fees and/or signature requirements to run for office in Berkeley, lowering the percentage needed for a candidate to win, lengthening the time between elections and runoffs, and authorizing Council to adopt Instant Runoff Voting in the city once it becomes legally and economically feasible. 

Councilmember Hawley made a last-minute—and somewhat half-hearted—effort to save the March parcel tax measure, arguing that City Council “has an obligation to the people of this community to let them vote on their options. If we don’t put it on the ballot, we are going to have to cut a lot of services, and there will be no community voice in that.” 

The proposed parcel tax would have made up for something less than half of what has been estimated to be a $15 million to $20 million city budget deficit within five years. Budget cuts will now have to take care of the entire deficit. 

Taking aim at community statements against the proposed tax, many of which were expressed at City Council’s one and only public hearing on the measure last week, Hawley said, “you can’t really gauge the support or lack of support for a measure by the people who come to a single public hearing.” 

Only Councilmember Maude Shirek supported Hawley’s efforts to keep the parcel tax on the March ballot, while Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington, abstained. Councilmembers Wozniak and Maio expressed concern that the tax measure couldn’t pass without a major campaign effort, and neither one said they could imagine how such a campaign could now be generated, given the depth of community opposition. 

“A good campaign needs volunteers who are pretty passionate about the topic,” Maio said. “I don’t see them lining up.” 

Councilmember Betty Olds agreed, calling it “foolish” to put the parcel tax measure on the ballot. “Mim [Hawley] is an optimist,” she said. “I wish I could share her enthusiasm. But if a mule is kicked in the head enough, he suddenly wises up. Frankly, all those folks that Mim says are for it, I haven’t encountered them. To put it on the voters and to spend all that money...If anybody read the Daily Planet today, that’s the kind of publicity we’re going to have all through the campaign. And it’s quite effective, frankly.” 

But it was the mayor who was most disinclined to keep the parcel tax alive. 

“When our firefighters turned around and said ‘We don’t support it,’ I mean, come on,” Bates said, exasperated. “All the people in the opposition have to do is say, ‘Look, even the people you’re going to fund are not for it.’ The logic says we we’re blown out of the water.” The parcel tax would have been earmarked entirely for fire services in Berkeley. 

Bates also questioned both the timing of the firefighters’ decision to oppose the tax, as well as the union local’s contention that they had not been formally informed by city officials that the tax would be set aside for the fire department. 

“Staff met with the firefighters a month ago,” the mayor said, “described what was going on, explained to them what was going on. They’re in favor of it. And suddenly, at the last minute, they pull the rug out from under us.” 

Bates also said that the firefighters opposed the tax “for reasons that are not totally clear to me.” 

A day after the mayor said he was unwilling to consider renewing the parcel tax sometime down the road after March of next year, he left the door open again. “Elections are like trains,” he said. “There’ll be another one before we know it. He could not do so, however, without using the opportunity to take a swipe at critics of the tax measure. 

“We’re going to have to prove to those people who stood up here before the Council and said ‘You tighten your belts. You do the job and we’ll support you in any kind of a tax measure,’” he said. “So we’re going to do that, and we’ll call them on it. If they’re really for real and not just demagogues, and are really interested in seeing the benefit of the city, they’ll see that we’ve really tightened the belt and they’ll help us with this problem.”