More Money for Civic Services

Just within the last couple of years, it happened: The Orange County Board of Supervisors finally woke up! After the county’s developers spent more than $2.4 million to defeat Measure A, the board members found themselves faced with a delicate balancing act: to supply the much-needed roads and other infrastructure without alienating their political cash machine, the developers.

They came up with the much-touted Growth Management Plan. They would form Mello-Roos districts to pay, up front, for the roads and other improvements before more houses were built. The board and the development community would have you believe that the developers are reaching into their wallets and paying big bucks to provide these “public benefits.”

All this without the sales price of the new houses going up? Don’t even consider it! The buyers of these new homes can look forward to paying not only their own mortgages and property taxes but also for the roads that all of us are desperate for. They will get to pay in installments over the next 20 or so years. This is wrong. It makes the new homes much more expensive.

Is it fair or equitable to have these new home buyers shoulder the burden of paying for roads and infrastructure that the county needs now? These facilities would be needed even without new construction. Let’s face facts: Someone has to pay. The taxpayers are not willing to, and they proved it in 1984 by sending Proposition A to a resounding defeat.

The politicians and economists tell us that most of the county’s growth in population has been internal. But there has been exponential growth in the job market within the county. These new workers must come from somewhere. If we pass a special sales tax to pay for roads, these workers will buy goods elsewhere. If we create an Orange County gas tax, these workers will buy gas near their homes.

There is a solution: have the people creating the need for additional roads pay for them. Business complains that it cannot hire workers from within the county, and it hires workers from Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties. These workers certainly contribute to a great deal of our traffic congestion.

If we charged business a payroll head tax but (1) exempted the first 50 employees of each business, (2) granted credits for car pools and for ride sharing and bus ridership, and (3) granted additional credits for workers, this tax would raise $112 million dollars per year. This would be $112 million dollars each year for Orange County roads and infrastructure.

Think about it. The Board of Supervisors should. The development community should--after all, it would be treated no differently from any other business.

Think about it. Traffic in Orange County would be better off. Politics in Orange County would be better off. Business in Orange County would be better off.

Orange County would be better off.

HOWARD O. KIEFFER

Trabuco Canyon

DR, Steve Lopez