Recently every registered voter and city resident received two important pieces of mail; I’ll bet some of you just threw them away, but they were both very important documents, and you should have read them carefully.
The first was the Santa Barbara County Voter Guide. There are two important issues on this special election ballot: One concerns the recall of the governor, and the other asks whether voters in Lompoc want to tax cannabis manufacturers.
You can decide for yourself about the governor, but you may want to know more about Measure Q2021, the cannabis tax measure.
The city of Lompoc sent out the second important document, an informational answer to frequently asked questions; who asked these questions is unclear but judging from the content I am sure that these questions may have been on many people’s minds who were unfamiliar with this proposal.
I have written on these pages that Lompoc has some serious funding issues. Over the last decade, City Council majorities have eliminated the reserve fund, and the city now budgets paycheck to paycheck, so to speak, hoping that their revenue estimates are accurate. The current budget is already in a deficit condition, and there are still 23 months left in this budget cycle.
Some might ask, “Why did the council approve employee raises if the funds are so low?” Well, it’s simple. As the cost of living soars beyond tolerable limits, our employees need the raises just to keep up. The same thing is happening in the civil sector—the cost of labor is going up, and the cost of goods and services is rising along with wage increases.
Lompoc is in a fiscal funk; there is very little revenue available for infrastructure or rolling stock upgrades in the general fund. We need fire equipment; we must relocate fire station 2 and bring fire station 1 up to current seismic, mechanical, and electrical code standards for the safety of the crews who work there. These improvements would cost millions of dollars.
The police department needs to upgrade its rolling stock, renovate the main police station, and improve evidence storage capability. It also needs a very expensive body camera program, including the sustained cost of video/audio storage, system management, and retrieval for response to legitimate requests for information—these improvements would also cost millions of dollars.
Then there are the parks and roads. Every park and recreation facility in the city requires significant upgrades. Our roads, specifically the roads in all the neighborhoods, need improvement—and in some cases a complete rebuild. The lack of maintenance and the condition of these roads means that these improvements would cost tens of millions of dollars.
Some people may be skeptical and think that the City Council could once again use the new revenue for purposes other than tangible improvements to public services. There is a different crew in charge these days, and if their last budget hearings were an example of how they would manage the new revenue, then we shouldn’t worry.
Others, specifically customers of cannabis products, might think that the cost per item will be increased because of the new tax. They should consider this: The manufacturers in our city distribute their products all over the state of California. The cost associated with this tax would be included in tens of thousands of items leaving their warehouses, thus it would be people from Oregon to the Mexican border and from the Pacific Ocean to the Nevada border who would be paying for services in Lompoc—I say that’s a good deal, and any price increase attributed to this tax would be considerably less than a penny per item.
The FAQ information brochure explains that the proposed tax is less than in any other area in the county, so anyone who would argue that this tax would discourage future manufacturing ventures is probably wrong.
What’s most telling about Measure Q2021 is that there were no arguments against the tax in the Voter Guide, and no one from the cannabis industry opposed the measure when any of the several public hearings were conducted to place the matter on the ballot.
Taking all these things into consideration, I recommend voting yes on Measure Q2021.
Ron Fink writes to the Sun from Lompoc. Send a response via the editor at clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 26 – Sep 2, 2021.