Antioch Council Begins Process of Potential Police Tax

If the City of Antioch is going to vote on a potential revenue enhancement in the near future, the city staff will first need to complete a long laundry list of action items courtesy of the city council.  The council wanted more information on possible tax options.

Antioch PD is currently staffed at 88 sworn officers, but there is a push being made to get them up to authorized staffing of 126 and in a best case scenario 144 officers which is ideal. Staff will determine “high, medium, and low” price ranges for all tax options.

Antioch is currently looking at the following:

• Type of Tax: sales tax, property tax, business tax or tax on certain business (landlords)
• Goals – 144 officers and that revenue needed
• When to go to voters
• Polling
• Outreach Options
• Sunsets

One decision made last night was the fact that regardless of how quickly the council and supporters of police want this tax, the council will not try and ram this down residents throats as soon as possible, the earliest they would bring this forward is in November.

If the council does decide November 5 is the day, they need to file by August 9.

Here is a look what each councilmember said last night. For the record, I think they are all spot on in remaining cautious.

Harper – should look toward to November because we need that time to outreach into community and possibility conduct a poll. I would like to see the research done concurrently with outreach to community. Just really strong feedback and involve community. I would like research done on sales tax, actually all three. I’ve heard from community on all three. There may be a contingency on all three, let’s put numbers out there and what are we looking at to bring folks to 144 (full staff), how much would it take to get us there and then look at those numbers and then decide on how much of a sales tax we want. Pittsburg did ½ cent and did a sunset going to quarter cent. I would like research on all three. As far as business license tax, we need to address that with people not paying the tax when they operate a business from home—research all three and concurrently do research to community.  I don’t think we should try for June, we need time to gage community, time to poll, talk to small groups, the chambers, the neighborhood watches. It takes time to do that.

 Rocha: I think the momentum is to go for some type of relief but I know it takes time. I know we need to go through the process but part of us want it now instead of waiting and that is a risk. We need to do something right away.

Tiscareno: Public opinion is very important to me. I see pro’s and cons on potential revenue measures and it’s important we hear from public. I also believe that a good poll is needed. It needs a good sampling and give us good indicator of how we want to address this. Again, the purpose of this is we have something that is a success, this is something expensive. If we did Nov. election, it’s going to cost a little over $250k so it’s something we can’t take lightly. If we are going to do something like this we have to have buy-in from the public. We have to have input and a good poll and we will go a long way.

Agopian:  I agree with Tiscareno about public input. We have to get information in real-time and polling. I just wanted to add an explanation point that I don’t know if everyone realizes we have had strong double digit increase in crime last two years… the way we are trending in staffing and apprehension of criminals is reducing…. The calls for serves are escalating and it’s a horrible graph. We are in a crime emergency. If we do nothing, we are giving our city a death sentence.

We have three different ways and there has been discussion about a target and working backwards or working with a type and going forward. Let’s go with a target and go backwards and figure out what works and what doesn’t.

The Chief laid out two plans, optimal… if we did that, what would it look like? If that is not going to work, we go with opting to authorized level (126) what is that number and work it backwards. What percentage?

Pittsburg is a good model.  I don’t know what that means for us in terms of dollars, but I’d like to know. I am very curious about business license tax, but rental properties without any sense of responsibility for this community and the potential impacts. How many units and what dollar amount is reasonable?

Timing is important, summer is too early, earliest is November and concerned about cost, very concerned on cost. Running a campaign is not cheap and we are not going to run it. It’s a community campaign. Some people have to step up and be willing to run that campaign. Do we have broad community support? Does labor? Business? Chamber? Average citizen support it? That is the winning combination. If we don’t have that, we will be battling ourselves. It’s a crime emergency and that’s why I am considering it and open to idea.

Last thing, strong transparency and communication are needed. If it was my choice, I’d offer 2/3 voting level. That threshold is what we want to see. We want that kind of support but it’s hard to get. But also it limits how we can use the money. It can only be used for what voters approve it for. We can’t go back behind and move it around. It’s only used for public safety. That is where issue, having said that, we can opt for 50% + 1 but we need strong accountability we need a line item on the budget. Public needs to know what we are asking them to pay, whatever we are taxing ourselves, make sure we are getting something for it. When polling, does it make a difference. How it’s done will that make a difference in polling?

Wilson: We need to set our goal and work from that. I want to be thoughtful. Hear from average voter who doesn’t come to council meeting and ensure we are accountable and make sure this fund is being used properly. I would like to look at all three and looking at difference years and looking at doing a mail in ballot and actual polling—I would like to hear feedback on either one.

Harper: Sometimes I am skeptical on things, but in law enforcement but I have never been more convinced that the police department is doing everything they can do…. I’ve’ never been more convinced they are doing everything they can do with what they have. What else can we do? I agree with my council to figure out what the number is and work backwards to get PD to full staffing and work backwards. Agree we need sunset clause on whatever measure. Research all three items, sales tax, parcel tax, business license. We need to poll the community, I like what Agopian talked about strict accountability and even understand special account set up just for that purpose.

Jakel:

• Do a cost matrix for staffing levels – price out maximum 144 (middle/low ground)
• Revenue put together sales tax at high/medium/low and tier
• Parcel tax at low/medium/high
• Same with business tax with high/medium/low
• Polling: look at legal constraints of what we can ask. May have to hear from community members to pitch in and provide that effort. Provide League of CA cities easy to read outcome of elections from state on every ballot measure and how they fared.

Agopian: I’d like to know for the cities that did pass sales tax measures (Concord/Pittsburg) if we can get any data on sales tax collection since they passed measure. Did any business migrate result from tax.

Crime prevention Forum
This debate will continue Thursday at Antioch High’s Beede Auditorium at 6 pm. The forum will include many stakeholders in Antioch to discuss how to stop the city’s crime spike and offer the community a chance to provide input.  According to the crime statistics provided by Chief Cantando, violent crime increase 30.6 percent from 2011 and total crime is up 24.2 percent while arrest were down 13.6 percent.