AGOURA HILLS : City Drops Plan to Tax Cellular Users

Agoura Hills city officials have abandoned their efforts to adopt a tax on cellular telephone users, saying it has been difficult to determine who they are.

“It was becoming very complex to try to figure out which phones were actually Agoura Hills-based,” said Mayor Louise Rishoff. “A cellular phone has no wire and is not fixed to any address. Where does a phone live, in an office? Some phones live in people’s briefcases.”

To locate users, the city was working with AirTouch Cellular, an Irvine-based company that provides cellular phone service to much of Southern California.

Agoura Hills officials initially estimated the tax could bring in $311,000 annually to city coffers. Based on a 3 1/2% tax rate, the average cellular telephone user would have paid about $1.58 cents more a month, city officials said.

Along with a tax on cellular telephones, the Agoura Hills City Council last summer approved a tax on gas and electricity. Those have gone into effect.