Pleasanton moving forward with community outreach efforts on potential funding ballot measure

The Pleasanton City Council gave city staff the green light Tuesday to continue working with outside consultants to garner public input on the possibility of the city pursuing a revenue measure with voters next year.

While the council did not directly vote on pursuing a specific type of measure, staff said the city’s financial status shows the need for additional money in order to continue funding critical city services and projects.

“We need to move this forward. We need to find out what the residents want and expect. We need to lean in and listen,” Mayor Karla Brown said during Tuesday’s council meeting. “We cannot continue to maintain the quality of life we have here in Pleasanton without … a measure like this. So it’s time to listen; it’s time to go out to the public.”

The decision to move forward with efforts to educate the community about the city’s financial needs for additional revenue passed with a 4-1 vote, with Vice Mayor Jack Balch in dissent. Balch argued that the initial polling shows it is not a good time to proceed with pursuing such a measure and that instead the city should revisit its budget and find ways to cut unnecessary spending.

“I think the polling and the trust in the community right now is strained,” Balch said. “I do think we are in a challenge — a fiscal challenge — one that I tried to raise from the rooftop in April. I do think there are ways that we could be more fiscally prudent with our dollar today.”

Back in March, the dais directed staff to look into possible revenue options so that the city could address infrastructure deficits and support ongoing city services and programs. A ballot measure was one of the many options discussed at that time.

Susan Hsieh, Pleasanton’s director of finance, said that despite its balanced budget, the city’s long-term financial forecast indicates the need for additional revenue in order to address the funding needs for the city’s parks, aging infrastructure, and repair and replacement projects.

“Like many other communities, we face financial challenges,” Hsieh said. “The decline in hotel tax revenue, coupled with rising costs, impacts our fiscal stability. Budget deficits are projected in future years.”

“This community’s assets are aging and we need funding to repair and replace those assets,” she added. “Over the last few years, inflation and a tight labor market have pushed up personnel costs and contract service costs in addition to increases in other costs, such as supplies and materials.”

That’s when representatives from FM3 Research, a research and data-analytics consultant, and Clifford Moss, the city’s revenue strategy consultant, took over the presentation and told the council that after polling Pleasanton voters, the city could look to place some sort of measure on next year’s ballot — although to get voters to pass it would take a lot of time, effort and public support.

About 650 Pleasanton voters were recently interviewed to ask what were their top concerns, funding priorities and whether they would support any of the potential tax measures, FM3 partner Curtis Below told the council.

He said that the highest-ranking priorities were first responder services followed by library services. He said voters were also most concerned with cost-of-living issues, drinking water quality, freeway traffic and local taxes.

Infrastructure concerns, on the other hand, were not too high.

Below said that the interviews mostly focused on a sales tax measure and that while half of the voters said they would be open to voting yes on such a measure, the ones who would vote no showed more intensity.

He did, however, say that support dropped once FM3 presented voters with additional information and cons of such a measure. The other two measures that FM3 discussed with voters were a general obligation bond and a hotel tax measure, however both did not get as much support as the sales tax did.

But he added that there is a disconnect between what the city needs and what residents feel the city needs given that most think that the city is doing well when it comes to financial stability.

“What these results show to me … is that the sales tax measure is potentially possible next year,” Below said. “But really one of the big challenges there is the perceived need for additional funding doesn’t seem to match the budget numbers and forecasts. A lot of the voters feel like you’re kind of a victim of your own success, they feel like things are going pretty well in the city.”

Bonnie Moss, principal at Clifford Moss, told the council that in order to continue pushing the conversation of seeking to place some sort of measure on the ballot forward, the city is going to need to elevate voters’ understanding of the city’s needs.

She said the trick will be finding the sweet spot of what the city needs are and what the voters want to support — and the only way to do that is to have honest conversations about what the needs are and how a revenue measure will benefit Pleasanton.

And while Balch said he would have preferred if the city had instead gone back and tightened the belt on the city’s budget, the rest of the council majority felt it was time to continue the process — especially given that Pleasanton has gone almost 130 years without seeking such a revenue measure.

“Whether it’s public safety, the parks, recreation programs and library … there’s a lot of needs we have and the forecast is kind of dismal,” Councilmember Valerie Arkin said. “If we did decide to put something on the ballot, if the community would support that, that’s what the process would show. We’re ultimately letting the voters decide here what’s important, and giving them that power to keep a lot of vital services and amenities we have here. So I’m all in favor of that.”