One line in particular leapt out at me from this week’s paper. I’m going to lift it straight from our news brief about a county supervisor bed tax vote, so you can see it here where I’m going to talk about it:
“Lawnae Hunter of the Economic Alliance of Northern Santa Barbara County and Joe Armendariaz of the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association said North County’s economy could especially benefit from an investment in economic development.”
Let me start by saying I respect Lawnae and Joe both. I think they’re sharp people who know their stuff, and when they talk, people who could stand to benefit from what they have to say should listen.
It saddens me a bit, though, that it seems like our elected officials need to be told that working on building our economy would be good for our economy.
Yes, I know that this presentation wasn’t made in a vacuum and that the county supervisors think long and often on the dollar-driven vitality of this coastal slice of California. I certainly don’t envy them—or any elected officials—the task of creating and/or maintaining the wellbeing of a population made up of people who increasingly want life-bettering benefits but decreasingly want to pay for them. Or decreasingly have the ability to pay for them.
But still.
Lawnae and Joe didn’t say anything I haven’t heard repeated over and over for years—decades, even—in Northern Santa Barbara County. Again, this is no fault of theirs. I can remember advisers and experts of all stripes saying in various venues that infrastructure is key to attracting the sorts of business we’ll all be relying on to carry us forward. That we need to at least keep pace with our neighbors. That we have to invest in economic development so we can then read the rewards of that investment.
I’m glad, then, that the supervisors took the message and decided to do something about it—especially by taxing the people who don’t live here anyway. That’s the idea, right? A bed tax, or a transient occupancy tax, seeks to pull money from guests staying in local hotels instead of the people who live and work here. That may put a damper on stay-cations, and the hoteliers themselves may not be thrilled (I’m just speculating here), but it’s a start.
The question I’m left with, though, is this: A start for what?
I dished it out a bit last week on Supervisor Peter Adam, but I’ll swing the pendulum the other way this week and say I’m on his side for this one. He was the lone dissenter when it came to the tax vote on April 22, primarily because he wanted to at least come up with what they’d be doing with the money rolling in before they asked for the money to come rolling in.
Or, to be more accurate, he wanted to at least come up with what they’d be doing with the money rolling in before they asked for local voters to decide on whether the money should come rolling in. Or, to be even more accurate, he wanted to at least come up with what they’d be doing with the money rolling in before they met again to make a final decision on whether to ask for local voters to decide on whether the money should come rolling in.
My other concern with this is that it sits squarely on the shoulders of the unincorporated areas of the county, giving them a transient occupancy tax that, if it succeeds, will exceed that of Santa Ynez and Santa Barbara—both very popular tourist destinations.
I know that Kurt Russell is bring a new je ne sais quoi to Los Alamos, but is it a 2.5-percent-tax-jump je ne sais quoi? A danger here, it seems, is the new tax driving incoming tourists to stay in the less-taxy cities and take their day trips into Los Alamos, Los Olivos, Orcutt, and … um … beautiful Isla Vista. How about Ventucopa, huh?
This will all be for the voters to decide, I suppose. If the Santa Barbara County constituency wants to mine its incoming visitors for an indeterminate purpose, that’s what’s going to happen—assuming this tax does make it to the ballot at all.
There are a lot of assumptions still on this table—or bed, as it were—so I think I’m going to hold my tongue from here on out. Or at least until the next time this comes up. In early May. m
The Canary sleeps where she pleases and doesn’t pay a thing. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 1-8, 2014.