Placentia Tax-Hike Foes Take Issue With City Mailer

Placentia residents last month each received an official-looking “Infrastructure Stock Certificate” signed by the mayor and the city administrator and certifying that “each resident is an owner of one common share of City of Placentia infrastructure valued at $135 million.”

City officials said it was a method of educating residents about a government “buzzword”--infrastructure--which means public facilities such as streets, sidewalks and sewers. But some residents criticized the mailing and its $1,200 price tag as a wasteful public relations ploy to persuade residents to vote for a utility tax increase on the Nov. 5 ballot. That tax is used to pay for public projects.

“I’m sure that the trash cans in Placentia are filling with stock certificates,” said former Planning Commissioner Rena Hagmaier. “I don’t suppose too many people are going to run to their safety boxes to store them.”

Hagmaier contacted the district attorney’s office, among others, and complained that the flyers, inside a city-financed newsletter, had been used for political purposes. The same newsletter also carried an endorsement by the mayor of the tax hike and all the other ballot measures.

Although the 2% city tax increase on electricity, telephone, gas and cable television bills already went into effect April 1, the issue won a place on the ballot after members of a group calling themselves the Right to Vote Committee gathered 3,111 validated signatures. The ballot item is an advisory vote, and council members are not obligated by law to abide by the vote.

The argument in opposition to Advisory Vote H was written by Hagmaier, Mayor Pro Tem John Tynes, former Planning Commissioner Edward Houston, resident Ina Gibbons and former Mayor Jack Gomez, a 16-year councilman. The tax, they argue, fulfilled what it was intended to do: It built the Placentia Civic Center, which includes a library and a police station. Now, they say, it should be rescinded.

“The idea was to build a civic center. They said when it was paid off, that they would repeal it, that it would die,” Tynes said.

Tynes, who was on the council when the tax was implemented, voted against it because “I thought it should go to the people for a vote,” he said. Now, “I don’t think we need it,” he said,

Gomez, a councilman from 1962 to 1978, said that in 1970 “we asked a lot of people if they would be in favor of a utility users tax. We called it a fair tax because everyone would be paying for it. In my opinion, that fair tax has become an unfair tax. . . . We told people that it was a 10-year tax. I’m still living in here. And I will like to see that money go back to the people.”

Money Used for Equipment

But the tax was created to pay off capital projects, including, but not limited to, the Civic Center, said City Finance Director Frank Dunnavant. The money also has been used to buy equipment such as police cars, Dunnavant said.

Neither the ordinance establishing the utility tax nor the resolution that created it mentions a time frame. But those present when the tax was passed differed on its life span.

According to minutes from an Aug. 4, 1970, public hearing, an assistant city attorney said, “This is an indefinite tax which would remain until the council determined it should be abolished.”

But even one of the councilmen who voted for the tax said the council “hoped to do away with the utility tax eventually, in 10 years,” according to minutes of Aug. 18, 1970.

In 1970, Placentia city employees were working out of a converted garage, and the city’s firefighters slept in a mobile home. Following the completion of the Civic Center in 1974, the utility users tax became an election issue during several races. In 1980, the tax was reduced from 5% to 4% and then to 3% in 1981. Then last February, the council increased it to 5% again.

In 15 years, Placentia’s population grew from 23,000 to more than 36,000 today. Meanwhile, utility bills went up and the utility tax income increased with it. Today, Placentia has $408,049 in that pot, Dunnavant said. Of $812,150 collected for the 1984-85 fiscal year, $189,200 was used to make the annual payments on the Civic Center, he said.

Opponents of the increase argue there already is enough money to pay off the principal and interest on the Civic Center.

Other Ballot Issues

But City Administrator Roger Kemp said the rest of the money is needed for street construction and maintenance and other projects. Dunnavant said it also is needed to buy equipment.

Two other issues facing Placentia residents Nov. 5 are:

- Advisory Vote E--whether the city should form an assessment district to pay for improvements to the athletic facilities at Kraemer Junior High School, build swimming pools at El Dorado and Valencia high schools and rebuild the pool at Gomez Community Center. The total tab for the improvements is $1.9 million. The average household would pay less than $2 a month for 15 years, Kemp said.

- Charter Amendment Question F-- whether the city should consolidate elections to coincide with state and federal election dates, a move, Kemp said, that would save the city more than $13,000 and increase voter turnout for local elections. Ballot Question G asks residents whether, if F is approved, the amendment should take effect in the November, 1986, or the November, 1988, election.