It seems like a small price to pay – a half-cent sales tax increase that would generate more funding to fix the Tijuana sewage crisis that has been plaguing our local beaches for decades.
The “Protect San Diego’s Health and Safety Act,” if passed on Tuesday, would hike up San Diego County’s sales tax rate from 7.75% to 8.25%, generating up to $450 million a year for a range of projects in healthcare, public safety and cross-border sewage issues.
The Board of Supervisors would ultimately vote on how to allocate the funds, but the proposal intends to set 22.5% aside for projects in the Tijuana River Valley, 60% to accessible healthcare and childcare, and 17.5% to wildfire prevention. These are only a few examples of how the total funding will be broken down.
The measure does not commit to any one project pertaining to the sewage crisis, but county leaders have said they want some of the funds to go toward building an entirely new treatment plant — one that would capture wastewater coming from the Tijuana River. The current plant only treats what Mexico captures.
The San Diego Taxpayers Association found that on average, a household would face an additional charge of $300 to $315 per year with this tax. That’s an increase of about $108 for each of the county’s 3.3 million residents.
Roughly $90 million to $100 million of that total would go toward the environmental disaster annually.
The county deserves applause for trying to do something about the sewage crisis that has been devastating shorelines and livelihoods for decades. Especially considering the fact that the state of California has been silent on this issue. Gov. Gavin Newsom has failed to protect the citizens of San Diego through methods like declaring a state of emergency, so kudos to the county for working to get a funding method on the ballot.
But as Election Day quickly approaches, voters should be vigilant of a few details regarding this bill, considering good money could be thrown at something that may be ineffective.
We should be wary of any umbrella tax that bundles many public services into one fee. It can result in wasteful spending and a lack of oversight.
For one, this half-cent increase would be permanent because it does not include a sunset clause. Combined with the fact that there are no year-over-year performance targets, taxpayers would indefinitely lose more of their money to taxes without having a clear way to measure how it’s being spent.
What’s concerning about the measure on our current ballot is that it is not clear what the specific breakdown of spending would be. We don’t have many details on this newly-proposed treatment plant yet, so before voting on the measure, citizens deserve to see more detail about how their money will be spent.
We should question where this new revenue stream will be applied and how it will work in coordination with the multiple agencies already tackling the issue.
This proposal is begging for a task force to coordinate with city, county, state and federal agencies to make sure there is no redundancy in how these income streams are being applied to the crisis.
Years down the line, this tax will become an indefinite part of our spending, and we’ll need to gauge whether it generated any real change.
Before being able to justify voting for this measure, additional details are needed. Voters need to be ensured their money is going to the right place.
