Longer wait times for graffiti removal and streetlight repair. Fewer police officers per shift. Completely eliminating school crossing guards.
Those are just some of the service cuts the city of South Gate made earlier this year as it stared down a $9.4 million annual budget deficit and a looming fiscal emergency.
But none of that was enough to convince South Gate voters to approve an 8% utility user tax that would have been tacked onto a wide range of utility bills, including electricity, water, cable and phone service. Now, the city is gearing up for more cuts, including closing sports fields and the city pool for the winter months.
South Gate’s utility tax was just one of the many ways Southern California cities asked their residents to give them more money via local tax initiatives this November, with proposed taxes on everything from hotel stays to cannabis businesses.
And those early results suggest South Gate is an outlier: Of the 32 total local tax measures on the ballot in Los Angeles and Orange counties, all but six appear poised to pass, according to early results. (There are still several more days of vote counting to come.)
Eleven transient occupancy tax measures, which tax overnight stays in hotels or short-term rentals, passed in cities from Burbank to Los Alamitos. Most cities sought to increase their existing hotel taxes by anywhere from 1 to 5 percentage points, while Lynwood residents voted to establish a hotel tax for the first time.
Business-related taxes, such as taxes on business licenses or on certain businesses, also mostly passed, as did most parcel taxes in cities including Pasadena and Culver City.
But sales taxes saw more mixed results. Cudahy, San Gabriel, Orange, Santa Ana and Los Angeles all approved sales tax measures, while voters in Diamond Bar, Hermosa Beach and San Clemente all voted down their local sales tax proposals.
Most of those sales taxes focused on maintaining basic city services in communities facing big budget deficits, driven by the rising costs of insurance, maintenance and infrastructure projects, and employee pensions, among other factors. But in San Clemente, the proposed 1% sales tax would have specifically funded sand replenishment and other beach projects, along with wildfire prevention work. That measure appeared to be headed for failure, with just 36% of voters in support as of Wednesday afternoon.
Voters in San Marino approved an extension of their utility tax, and increased it from 5% to 6%. Last year, the tax provided almost $2.2 million in revenue.
City officials in South Gate had hoped for a similar boon, and projected the utility tax would bring in an estimated $10.4 million per year in general fund revenue, while raising total utility costs by about $39 per month for a typical household.
Leading up to the election, the city of South Gate pointed to other neighboring cities that have their own utility taxes, including Downey, Lakewood and Norwalk, where the tax mostly hovers around 5%. “South Gate is the exception, not the rule,” noted one city presentation that pointed to these other taxes in a bid to coax voters to go along.
Voters weren’t convinced. “I’m extremely frustrated that you now want to do electricity, water, sewer, cable, cell phone, gas. ... That hurts us. You’re passing that on to us and that is absolutely not acceptable,” said one resident at a City Council meeting on the measure earlier this year.
LAist has reached out to the city of South Gate about what’s next for the city.
What to keep in mind about these numbers
- For LAist's charts showing vote counts, we get numbers directly from the L.A. County and Orange County registrars of voters for local races. Totals are updated on our site as soon as possible after the registrars provide new tallies. For statewide races, counts come from the California Secretary of State's Office.
- Has your ballot been tallied yet? You can track the status of your ballot here.
- Keep in mind that, in tight races particularly, the winner may not be determined for days or weeks after election day. That's because early voting and mail-in ballots have fundamentally reshaped how votes are counted and when election results are known. The upshot: Ballots can be postmarked up to and including Election Day. They're counted as long as the ballot arrives within seven days of the election and that window contributes to the lag time before results are announced.
- In L.A. County, for example, daily updates on the counting are expected to take place at least once a day — usually around 5 p.m. — through Nov. 13. (There will be multiple updates on Nov. 5 and 6.) Then, the once-a-day counts will resume again on Nov. 17, 19, 25 and 27. The office is scheduled to certify election results by Friday, Nov. 27. In Orange County, there will be multiple updates after the polls close, and then daily updates weekdays at 5 p.m. until results are scheduled to be certified on or before Dec. 3.
- The California Secretary of State is scheduled to certify the election results on Dec. 11.
- Our priority during the vote count will be sharing outcomes and election calls only when they have been thoroughly checked and vetted by journalists. To that end, we will rely on official results and report when candidates concede. Otherwise, we rely on NPR and the Associated Press for race calls. We will not report the calls or projections of other news outlets. You can find more about NPR's and the AP's process for counting votes and calling races here and here.
