Business Licenses: X misses the mark

Now that you have your ballot, you see that you have only one B'game-specific vote to cast--to increase (or not) the B'game business license fees.  (District 5ers also have a city council non-race to vote in since Rachel Cyr withdrew, but after the ballots were set.)  I'm of mixed mind on Measure X, and not because of a reflexive dislike of tax/fee increases although I do have that too.  I get that licenses have been $100/yr for every business forever, but I think the city missed the mark at the high-end of the tax schedule.  You won't find it anywhere but on the city site here, so I will retype the proposed schedule:

            Gross receipts of the business                    Annual license fee

           < $250K                                                        $200

            $250K to $1M                                                $300

            > $1M                                                           $750

That's it.   You can gross $1.25M or $125M and you pay the same amount.  Or $1.25B, looking at you Meta/Facebook/Oculus.  Not sure why there isn't a $20M or $40M level with a good-sized number attached to it.  Many cities take a percentage of gross receipts--I'm not in favor of that, but shouldn't some of the big companies adding crushing density and traffic to our town pay more than $750?

The other aspect of the measure that needs mentioning is the last bit of text which reads "....until ended by voters, requiring audits and all funds staying in Burlingame".  Sounds innocuous enough, but the Oct. 10 Daily Post ran a frontpage article titled "Ballot wording called misleading".  It describes a Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury report that calls out several ballot measures' language that may be misleading:

That included phrases such as "until ended by voters," which falsely implies that the measure includes a way for voters to repeal it later, the grand jury said.  The grand jury report, released on Friday, pointed to other deceptive "tricks and tactics" used in ballot questions, such as adding the feel-good phrases like "all funds spent locally".

Whooops.  Measure X is two-for-two.  We shall see if anyone decides to use the Santa Clara findings to challenge the result here in B'game.

Comments

[Phinancier]

I think you meant oh-for-two

[Phinancier]

Timing is everything

One of the most closely watched economic data releases of the month, the year-over-year headline number for the September consumer-price index came in at 8.2%, down from 8.3%, but it was the rise in the core CPI number, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, that got the blame for the selloff, posting a monthly rise of 0.6% versus a Wall Street forecast of 0.4%.

The increase in the core rate over the past year climbed to a new peak of 6.6% from 6.3%, marking the biggest gain in 40 years.

[Peter Garrison]

thanks guys for keeping us up-to-date on this stuff. I appreciate it.

[Joe]

You're welcome, sir. By the way, I ran into another friend in town today who read this post and I realized I didn't get around to taking a position. I'll probably vote FOR it as a better basis than what we have now. I just think it could have been so much better if the Big Guys were paying the city real money to operate here.

[Coniq]

Seems absurd that Facebook will only pay $750 a year.

[Joe]

I skipped over the second part of Measure X - the weed tax. It's a no-brainer and should have been crafted on its own as Measure H for "high". The ballot paragraph would be about three sentences long. The DJ is high-lighting it here:

https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/burlingame-seeks-cannabis-tax/article_7293bd70-4df3-11ed-8a1d-f3299325c116.html?utm_source=smdailyjournal.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletters%2Fheadlines%2F%3F-dc%3D1666015207&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline

I guess I know more than the average bear about the weed distribution business from just one well-connected visit; which you can assess here:

https://www.burlingamevoice.com/2019/09/election-issues-pot-dispensaries-yea-or-nea.html#comments

BUT the interesting bit of the DJ's piece by Nicholas Mazzoni is at the very end and it goes to the point of this post. See if you can translate this:

Businesses that generate $250,000 income or lower will be charged $200 a year; $250,000 to $1 million will be charged $300; and $1 million and above will be charged $750.

About 7% of Burlingame’s 8,700 businesses fall in that $1 million or more category; 93% percent of the city’s businesses will pay under $300, Colson said.

For a business that makes more than $1 million, $750 might not sound like a lot of money. The reason the fee is so low is that multiple businesses in Burlingame, specifically the car dealerships, restaurants and coffee shops own multiple businesses and would burden them more than it would help the city, said Colson.

[Phinancier]

I guess we need to raise Mom and Pop's business licenses so we can lay out $1.4M in a 55 (yes! 55) year loan to some developer to build subsidized by us apartments?

https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/burlingame-helps-fund-new-affordable-housing/article_ed378bdc-5371-11ed-93af-4ff8d0498cc3.html?utm_source=smdailyjournal.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletters%2Fheadlines%2F%3F-dc%3D1666620014&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline

[MBGA]

Doesn't that subsidized housing seem a little small these days? Common people, we can do better. All you need to do is copy and paste a few more stories and you can get this big boy:

https://www.berkeleyside.org/2022/10/21/berkeley-downtown-housing-high-rise-core-spaces

Since (D) leadership intends to make everywhere look and be the same we should be dropping the potentially problematic names of cities, and just go to calling them sectors. It’s much more democratic and easier to administrate. Burlingame should change its name to USCH/BA/sector37.