Measure Y:  How It’s Helping SLO Town

January 2007

Viewpoint by Mayor Dave Romero

In November 2006, our community overwhelming approved a General Fund revenue increase - Measure Y, a ½-penny increase in our sales tax.  Citizens’ voting to tax themselves is a rare thing, and we owe it to our citizens to regularly report on how the added money is being used. 

The added ½-penny lifted our sales tax rate from the lowest level in the State up to the mainstream, 7 ¾ cents per dollar (which is equal to or less than the rate paid by 85% of the State’s residents.)  The State still gets its 6¼ cent share, but SLO now gets a penny and one-half.  The half-pennies add up and we estimate new revenues from Measure Y of almost $13 million through June 30, 2009.

The chart shows how this money is being allocated to various programs and services over the 2007-09 Financial Plan period.  Measure Y was approved for eight years and will sunset in November 2015, unless extended by voters.  So if your favorite service does not appear to be getting enough of the pie, allocations will change over time as pent-up needs are met and other projects mature and get funded (such as a new community/senior center).
 
The list of all new programs and projects made possible by Measure Y is too long to include here, but they are detailed in our 2007-09 Financial Plan.  Here are a few example enhancements found in that Plan, which was adopted following extensive community involvement in identifying Measure Y priorities: 

• Adding six new police officers to beef up neighborhood patrol and traffic safety
• Establishing a full time Fire Marshall and firefighter Training Officer
• Reactivating the neighborhood paving program by investing an added $3.2 million in street maintenance and pot hole repair
• Restoring regular contributions to the Open Space Preservation fund
• Doubling the neighborhood code enforcement staff
• And for the first time in years, investing in major creek and flood protection efforts – about $3.6 million dollars!

We need highly qualified people to carry out our priorities, but in recent years it has become increasingly challenging to attract and retain top employees.  Partially because of past belt tightening, some of our positions had fallen way behind in compensation.  For example, our Police Chief slipped to the fourth highest paid chief of the six cities in the county.  We have recently lost some key people to neighboring cities like Paso Robles, Santa Maria and Morro Bay.  And due to low salaries, filling some important job vacancies has been very tough. 

The Council therefore set aside funding – separate from the added Measure Y budget – to support a detailed study and phased-in salary range adjustments for a minority of City job classifications.  Some have incorrectly connected these adjustments to the use of Measure Y funds.  While I won’t apologize for wanting the best possible employees serving my beloved San Luis Obispo, I do want to clarify that these adjustments were made without reducing Measure Y revenues – and will cost a very modest 0.5% (one-half of one percent) of General Fund revenues over the same 2007-09 time period.

I hope you agree that supporting Measure Y has been a great thing for our town.  I believe it will assure that we all share many more “perfect days in paradise” for years to come! 

If you would like more information about our use of Measure Y funding, please visit the City’s 2007-09 Financial Plan and Budget-in-Brief at www.slocity.org/finance/finplan.asp.  Or call us at 781-7125.