AnonymousSource: City of Santa Barbara
Transient Occupancy Tax Results for the City of Santa Barbara
The City of Santa Barbara collected approximately $1.40 million in transient occupancy taxes (TOT) for November 2018, which is 7.8% above November of last year.
The City has collected approximately $9.5 million in TOT revenues through the first five months of this fiscal year, which runs from July 1 through June 30. The City’s adopted TOT budget is $19,605,700.
The Transient Occupancy Tax table can be viewed here.
STR would save State St.
Legalize w/in 5 – 8 blocks (walking distance) to State St, watch State St flourish.
Don’t celebrate any “increase” yet – this area was devastated by fires last year about this time last year. The key is to budget within your means, which the city has not done for a long long time and is carrying a huge unfunded liability of approximately one billion dollars – unfunded city employee pensions and huge infrastructure maintenance backlog. We need sober talk about city revenues as they relate to city liabilities; not distorted happy talk about short-term quarterly increases. City residents want to know how many happy-talk quarterly increases will it take to wipe out the current one billion dollar unfunded city liabilities. Give it to us straight, city finance office.
That makes no sense. The article literally states “for November 2018, which is 7.8% above November of last year” The Thomas Fire started December 4th. You comment abou the area being devastated by fires does not make sense.
But he’s dead right about the employee pensions and the infastructure maintenance backlog. Somehow, that info always gets buried in the news releases.
The Chicken Little anti gubment kooks hate good news from the city, the facts do not match their feelings. Some of them act like the City’s finances are some sort of secret. Go to the City website and there you may read years of audited financial statements.
You can ignore the facts and the figures but do know that your pollyanna-like approach mirrors the entirety of the city’s management, the CoC, SBCA and the SB Realtors in 2007… ‘Nothing to worry about folks, the economy is strong!’.
@sbobserver: Observe the facts. The audited financial statments show that the City is in excellent financial health. The current AA3 bond rating is one of the highest in the nation. According to the “pollyannas” at Moodys that means “Aa” – Issuers or issues rated Aa demonstrate very strong creditworthiness relative to other U.S. municipal or tax-exempt issuers or issues. ”
Oh those rainbow unicorn loving liberals on Wall Street!
Credit rating means property owners are expected to be good for any city generated bond debt, if voters pass more bonds. That has nothing to do with the city’s unfunded pension liablity status. SB is one of worst cities in California by that measurement. City lied to us when they asked us to pass the Measure C retail sales tax increase. In fact it was just a shell game to cover the huge pension payments the city now has to make. That obligation gets even worse in the future and Measure C has not been the windfall the city promised it would be. Spend and tax. Tax and spend. Your choice – but both are very poor options today. City employees get the benefits; city residents get the same ongoing and crumbling infrastructure. A few parks got buffed up, but our streets and sidewalks remain in terrible condition.
Just look at our posts. They’re downvoted for deletion pretty quickly. There are thousands of people who work for the government, directly and indirectly in this town. Government is the largest employer in the city and county when all ancillary services and operations are counted. So it’s no wonder so many people have a vested interest in keeping the noise level low especially when it comes to the fiscal solvency of the city and our leaders actual abilities and strengths.
No it’s not. What’s killing housing is affordability. What’s killing affordability is a lack of income. Lack of income based on the truth that purchasing power for the average american has gone up 10% in fifty years (Pew Research). Look it up, easy to find plenty of studies about the decline of the american paycheck. Pay people in keeping with the rise in real estate values, and there will be no housing availability problem.
1 up vote.
9 down votes.
Evolve, or die.
Amen. When the public lets politicians act like freshmen kid with a credit card that gives “free” money, that’s what happens. It would help if politicians and media had a background in economics instead of merchandising.
How many quarterly “increases” in tax revenues will it take to wipe out the city’s current one billion dollar unfunded liabilities for employee pensions and infrastructure maintenance backlog? And only if these tax revenue “increases” are put into a lock-box, instead of getting spent on more ongoing city employee perks and benefits.
Supporting the public pension system with hotel taxes is unsustainable. Sad that the City is too busy money grubbing and making inside deals to notice State Street is a basket case.
It could get worse before it gets better. Hopefully they can consider rezoning lower State Street, building density apartments and having small ground level shops and markets .
It’s all about the Pension Debt.
Even sadder, we keep electing city council members who refuse to even acknowledge this fiscal unsustainability. And re-elect those who inflicted this on us in the first place, yet who skip out when the bills come due – Gregg Hart comes to mind. Why do we keep doing this?
What you describe is what happens when we continue to elect inept, inexperienced, uneducated representatives to run the city and control its budget and its future. The record is clear. They spend your money, payback their benefactors, hire their cousins and friends and spend your grandchildren’s money as if it was both real and infinite. Murillo is the third such mayor we have had in a row. Both of our previous mayors have had no prior budgeting (p/l), business or finance experience, let alone formal economics education. And as such, they all proved completely incapable of addressing let alone mitigating the financial mess that plagues the city of SB. Instead they all increased taxes, increased spending, increased debt and liabilites, all while the foundation of our city decayed right in front of your eyes. Selling your city to the lowest common denominator (tourism) is as short sighted as possible. These are low wage jobs catering to out of town corporate interests. Not only do they undermine the city, they steal our most limited resources and return pennies on the dollar to our citizens. We need to reduce the city’s budget, decrease reliability on fickle, cycilcal tourism dollars and rebuild our city’s core. Who is going to pay for the pensions, the infrastructure the debt and the liabilities the city has accumulated? Their plan? Just bring in more cruise ships, fill more $300 a night Motel6 rooms and hope that things just get better on their own…