By Chris Krohn
That was an ugly Santa Cruz City Council meeting last week. An urgency vote was called on the recommendation of an Income Subcommittee. The question of asking voters to raise the current 9.25% sales tax rate by half a cent turned into a feast of tyrants that lasted for hours as Councilor Sandy Brown, the lone objector, became the subject of so much fear and scorn in the council. The Santa Cruz Mayoress even mentioned she’d been working on her for hours, but Brown stood upright, which is difficult when trapped in a zoom box. Unless the council approves a bonus for frontline city workers and immediately increases the lowest wage to the city’s approved livelihood, Councilor Brown would vote no.
You could cut up the zoom space with a knife; the tension leaked from my computer screen.
When Brown was attacked for not trusting other council members, she took a deep breath and calmly declared, “There is a systemic lack of interest in this council in helping our low-wage workers,” which is what there is. It wasn’t personal, it was about the city’s failed direction coming out of the pandemic. City workers seemed an afterthought, with a $ 500,000 contract on the same city council agenda for consultants to redraw the lines of downtown and expand them to other parts of the city for larger development projects to be approved.
The vote on the increase in sales tax had to be unanimous, as it was an emergency measure and state law requires that the entire city council must approve in order to put it on the ballot. If passed, it would potentially raise around $ 6 million. And so it came about that one of only two doctoral council members, Dr. Sandra Brown, tried to compromise, but other council members were in no mood to compromise.
This “majority tyranny,” as Alexis de Tocqueville might have called it, certainly looked clumsy to viewers on community television, but Sandy Brown did not let himself get down. Majority tyranny only reflects the lazy steamroller approach councilors have when locals on Zoom appear before them. This majority in the council seeks to appease all kinds of outside real estate agents and developers at market prices, but not the city’s working class voters. One councilor even invoked “ask the question” to break the debate and speed up the vote, apparently wanting to see Brown squirm and give in to hours of speech, but Brown held out. It was the only thing she could do to make sure the workers at the table had a voice.
Perhaps Councilor Brown was aware of a pandemic crisis full of bureaucratic incompetence and excessive demands on the other Council members.
Brown’s message is simple. It represents voters who want affordable, non-luxury housing; a central downtown park and permanent home for the Farmers Market; a converted library as the cornerstone of an urban square in the city center; and above all fair and livable wages for those who are desperately trying to live here.
Brown also points out that a sales tax hike is regressive. Why not instead present the voters with a hotel tax increase that affects tourists with disposable income, or a “vacancy tax” that requires second and third homes to pay when they leave their places free, or a real estate transfer tax like the city together with the homeowner of ours ridiculous, sky-high house prices?
Perhaps Brown’s no vote was also a vote of no confidence. This city is bleeding from staff and can soon depend on the life support of the administration: the fire chief, the city manager, the library, water and finance directors are all free on bail.
Rather than adopting this tax, it should be time to think soberly and thoroughly analyze where the city is and where we are going after the pandemic, rather than adopting a regressive VAT hike.
Chris Krohn is a former member of the Santa Cruz City Council.