Higher sales taxes being pursued as Sebastopol faces looming crisis

With few other options, water rates already up, fire departments consolidated, Sebastopol commits to asking voters to lift sales taxes up to half a percent.

Sales taxes could rise above 10% in Sebastopol if city
and county measures pass this November.

It is looking more likely that Sebastopol voters will be asked to raise sales taxes in November.

The Sebastopol city council, by a 3-2 vote, has authorized a poll to test support for raising the city's nine and a quarter percent sales tax by another quarter or half of a percent.

The city of 7,500 is staring down a budget crisis. City Manager Don Schwartz laid out its scale to the council.

"The general fund, long term prospects roughly $4.3 million plus, a year is what we would need to fill the gap and maintain our assets properly and improve our roads modestly. I don't think there is any one fix to the fiscal emergency, we are going to need a mix of strategies including a mix of new revenues."

Those include collecting a million dollars each in room taxes from two hotels.

One, the Hotel Sebastopol, approved half a decade ago, remains a vacant lot.

Councilmembers disagreed on the size of the potential increase, and whether a consulting firm should be hired to poll the public and share positive messages about the measure.

One member of the public, Linda, who did not share her last name, cautioned that voters face their own financial struggles.

"I think where you are going to run into problems is that there's also a library tax, which, I will vote for the library tax no matter what, but that's me, I'm a retired librarian, but I have a feeling, I think people are going ahhhhhhh already with the cost of groceries, and the water going up and the electrical power, I just got my power bill and I went oh my gosh, you're going to have to do that educational polling."

Voters are also likely to be asked to approve two other county-wide sales tax increases this fall, one to bolster fire services and another to for childcare and early childhood development.

Councilmember Neysa Hinton says the city has little choice.

"It's not an easy thing, but we just have to do it. We are a small town. We are in this boat because we had one time money dropping in, and we have to ask our citizens for this extra bump."

Sebastopol residents will soon see a poll to gauge support for the potential ballot measure.