Thumbs Down for Users Tax, Growth Control but Up for Land Purchase

Voters in Rancho Palos Verdes on Tuesday rebuffed an effort by city officials to extend the city’s 5% utility users tax, which is used for street and drainage work.

On other South Bay ballot measures, voters in Manhattan Beach defeated a growth-control proposal while Hermosa Beach residents approved earmarking an existing tax for purchase of open space.

Rancho Palos Verdes Councilwoman Jacki Bacharach said council members could have worked harder to sell the utility-tax extension to voters. But she said a “tax that is not emotional, such as one for police services, has an incredible uphill battle in a conservative community like ours. The feeling is negative.”

Tax Not Deductible

But Richard M. Grotz, chairman of a citizens group that wrote the ballot argument against the tax, said the measure lost not because voters were against the purpose, but because the tax was not deductible on federal tax forms. Opponents argued that the city should have proposed a special property parcel tax that could be deducted from income taxes. Grotz said he would not be against a parcel tax.

In final unofficial returns Tuesday, 52% of the voters opposed the measure, known as Proposition H. The tax, which was enacted by the City Council two years ago and brings in about $1.8 million a year, will expire Nov. 15. (Voter approval for continuing the tax was required under provisions of Proposition 62, approved by state voters in 1986.)

The city has collected enough utility tax money to complete 26 street resurfacing or reconstruction projects by the end of next June. But the loss of the tax jeopardizes 20 other street projects, as well as two storm drain reconstructions, according to the city.

Bacharach said the council will hold a budget session to try to find other sources for street repair money and to consider putting a tax measure--utility tax or parcel tax--on the November ballot.

“We’ll look at all the options,” she said, adding that the narrow vote has convinced her that a more aggressive campaign by officials would be successful.

In Manhattan Beach, supporters of the defeated growth-control initiative say they will attempt to place another such measure before the city’s voters.

“This is the first chapter of a long book,” said Bruce Ponder, a spokesman for the Neighborhood Protection Initiative Committee. “The concern about the impact of development in our community is not going to go away with one initiative.”

Ponder declined to say when he and others who supported the measure, known as Proposition E, will attempt to gather signatures to place another initiative on the ballot.

The measure, which was opposed by all five members of the City Council, was rejected by 58% of the voters. It would have prohibited commercial parking lots in residential areas and required developers to include above-ground parking structures when calculating a building’s total square footage--a change that generally would have reduced the size of projects.

The measure also would have removed an estimated 1,600 residential parcels from the city’s so-called “beach area,” where structures can be built to a maximum height of 30 feet, and would have imposed the same 26-foot height limit that covers most other properties in the city.

Supporters argued that the initiative was needed because of excessive development in both commercial and residential areas.

Opponents argued that the measure would have arbitrarily taken away the rights of hundreds of property owners to build the type of home they want.

Ray Golik, a city planning commissioner who co-chaired Neighbors Opposed to Proposition E, said that although his group is delighted the measure lost, residents should not interpret the results as a defeat for growth control.

“Maybe we didn’t get our point across,” Golik said. “Everyone in Manhattan Beach is for controlled growth. There was just serious disagreement on how you do it.”

Golik predicted that many of the development concerns voiced by the measure’s supporters would be addressed in coming weeks as zoning ordinances are updated as part of the community’s General Plan process. The General Plan outlines the city’s development goals.

There was little controversy in Hermosa Beach, where voters overwhelmingly endorsed the use of money generated by a previously approved increase in the city’s utility users tax for the purchase of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway right of way, which cuts through the heart of the city.

City Clerk Kathleen Midstokke said 83% of the voters favored using the funds to buy the land.

$666,000 a Year

A two-thirds approval was needed because the measure allocates the money for a specific use. The tax increase from 6% to 10%, which will generate $666,000 annually, was approved by a simple majority of voters last November. The City Council promised to use the additional funds to buy the 20-acre right of way, but was not obliged to do so.

The council voted in February to put the special measure on Tuesday’s ballot to specify how the extra funds are to be used.

The measure also provides that the tax will return to 6% after the purchase of the right of way is completed.

Compiled from reports by Times Staff Writers Gerald Faris, Adrianne Goodman and Tim Waters.