SOUNDING OFF:

In their editorial (“Hiking hotel tax shouldn’t be 1st option,” July 20), the Daily Pilot editors got it wrong.

They made the false assumption that the proposal to place an increase in the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) on the ballot was city officials’ first option to secure our financial future. It was not.

At their regularly scheduled meeting July 15, the Costa Mesa City Council disregarded the wise counsel of City Manager Allan Roeder and Finance Director Marc Puckett, and voted unanimously to simply “receive and file” the suggestion by Councilwoman Linda Dixon to place a modest increase in the TOT on the November ballot.

It was clear Mayor Eric Bever, Mayor Pro Tem Allan Mansoor and Councilwoman Wendy Leece already had their minds made up and would not support any tax increase, even the TOT, which affects only visitors to our city.

For years Roeder, Puckett and the staff have done a masterful job of balancing the budget even though demand for services and improvements frequently outstripped the revenue needed to meet those demands. They did this through tight fiscal management and clever utilization of fund balance — pushing the money left over from the current year to balance the next year’s budget.

Costa Mesa sales tax revenues are falling off dramatically — double the rate anticipated in the current budget. The impact of the housing-market decline and downward assessments by the Orange County Tax Assessor make property tax revenue suspect right now. It is for that reason that Roeder and his staff strongly recommended an increase in the TOT be placed before the voters. Roeder told them that, if the city does experience revenue shortfalls as anticipated, there is no “fat” in the budget to be sacrificed — only meat and bone exist on our municipal carcass, and that essential services and improvements would have to be deferred or abandoned altogether if new revenue sources cannot be identified and implemented.

Our elected leaders either didn’t think the voters were smart enough to understand what an increase in the TOT would mean to our city or they didn’t want to be viewed as being soft on taxes in this election year, or both. Consequently, we’ve missed the boat on the TOT increase again. Such a tax increase may only be placed on the ballot for voter consideration in elections when council members are chosen; 2010 is the next opportunity for considering this tax increase.

In the meantime, the chickens will come home to roost early next year when the true impact of our slipping economy is being felt in the form of reduced property tax revenues and declining sales taxes.

We have just launched into the campaign season and this action Tuesday gives us much to think about when we consider who will get our votes in November.

GEOFF WEST lives in Costa Mesa.