Board could place the tax before voters in November election
A consultant hired by Santa Clara County is reporting that surveyed residents wouldn’t mind a sales tax increase if it helped the county fund emergency and trauma services and children care.
Santa Clara County supervisors haven’t begun discussing the possibility of asking voters for the sales tax hike, which could come in the form of a quarter- or half-cent increase. If the board decides to go ahead with it, it isn’t likely to be heard until the April budget deliberations, said Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage. Measure H would seek to add 50 cents of sales tax to a $100 purchase, or $5 to a $1,000 purchase.
A consultant was paid $65,000 to produce analysis of the last sales tax measure – which voters spurned in 2006 – and to conduct the survey, said county spokeswoman Gwen Mitchell. The consultant is Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin and Associates, a different firm from the one that did similar work in the months preceding the 2006 measure, Mitchell said.
This time, the consultant is reporting that 66 percent of voters – what it called a “solid majority” in a presentation to the supervisors on Jan. 29 – would vote for a half-cent sales tax for health services. They surveyed 600 household in the county that they determined were most likely to vote in November.
If the supervisors were to decide they want Measure H, it would be placed on the ballot, said county spokeswoman Gwen Mitchell.
Supervisor Don Gage said he is withholding his support for the tax measure, because he views it as a burden on taxpayers and that service cuts and layoffs needed to be explored as options to balance a projected deficit of more than $200 million in the 2008-2009 fiscal year, which starts July 1. In 2006, Mitchell said the county “got a large percentage of the vote but not quite enough to carry” it through. Estimates then showed that the county would have raised $80 million from a quarter-cent tax and $160 million from a half-cent tax.
“It’s very difficult for me to ask people to pay more money when we haven’t cut any programs,” Gage said.