Roseville City Council Unanimous on Tax Hike
Local Community Weighs In on City Priorities: Council places local revenue measure to ensure public safety, roads and essential city services
For over a year the City of Roseville has conducted outreach to residents and businesses, reaching thousands and soliciting feedback about their priorities for maintaining quality of life in the City.
Top priorities include preventing cuts to essential services including emergency response times, police and fire responses, and parks and recreation, as well as maintaining city streets, roads and repairing potholes.
Responding to these priorities, the Roseville City Council at its June 6 meeting unanimously approved placing for voter consideration a half-cent locally-controlled general sales tax measure on the November 2018 ballot. If passed, the measure would generate an estimated $18.4 million annually in city revenue to protect Roseville's public safety, roads and essential services.
As a fiscally responsible city, the measure includes an independent citizens' oversight board, regular audits, and a guarantee the revenue generated will be spent locally with funding that cannot be taken by the state.
"We need to maintain our quality of life by keeping our commitments," said Acting City Manager Dominick Casey. "We need to ensure our roads and streets are repaired now, otherwise they simply continue to deteriorate and become more costly to fix. And we must ensure current levels of police and fire are maintained at levels the community desires and that keep our city safe, no matter what happens with the State budget or economy."
Over the past 10 years, Roseville has taken steps to reduce the General Fund budget including reducing the city work force, reducing employee compensation and benefits, and reducing levels of community services.
To close the budget gap during the recession, Roseville deferred maintenance needs on roadways, IT infrastructure, libraries and parks that must be addressed, and borrowed from reserve funds that must be paid back.
As a general sales tax measure, the revenue generated can be used for essential services the community has said they value including neighborhood police patrols, fire protection, 9-1-1 emergency response, crime suppression, street and pothole repair, libraries, parks and recreation, job creation and economic development programs.