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At recent Pleasanton City Council meetings, residents have been either expressing their support for what would be the city’s first-ever sales tax increase measure or their distrust in government leadership for not seeking other alternatives to address the city’s budget challenges.
And as Election Day approaches, those who’ve supported the council’s decision to place the revenue measure on the ballot this past July continue to argue that Measure PP is the only way to avoid difficult budget decisions in the future that could threaten essential city services such as the police and fire departments.
“Should Measure PP fail there will be real negative consequences for the community and our quality of life,” Matthew Gray, chairperson of the committee Protect Pleasanton’s Future Supporting Measure PP, told the Weekly.
However, on the other side residents who have been against the idea of increasing Pleasanton’s sales tax from 10.25% to 10.75% continue to say it is unnecessary — at least for right now — because they feel the city is downplaying information that could show better budget assumptions for the near future.
“I would support looking at this in two years as a possible tax measure if we haven’t resolved the budget issues,” Doug Miller, chairperson of the No on Measure PP committee, told the Weekly.
The Pleasanton Chamber of Commerce also took that stance recently after its Board of Directors voted unanimously to accept and approve an official “No for now” stance on Measure PP. This came after the chamber’s Business And Community Political Action Committee received survey answers from 175 out of 600 chamber members and discovered that four out of five of the respondents opposed the measure.
“The Chamber’s Measure PP position was strongly influenced by the fact that 80% of members who answered our survey, which we started in August before the individual Candidate interviews, oppose the measure,” James Cooper, president and CEO of the chamber, told the Weekly. “If our members were closer to 50/50 on the measure, the chamber likely would have not taken a position. However, the city did not do a good enough job of convincing businesses that the solution being presented (sales tax increase) is the best and only way to address the pending fiscal crisis.”
But brewing underneath the arguments may be another political battle. One that has more to do with how city candidates are aligning themselves on Measure PP and how they might be using the 0.5% sales tax increase as a key talking point in their campaigns, which some say has created a divide in the city.
“This has all been a political smear campaign against the city, against Gerry (Beaudin), against our mayor, against all of us, to the benefit of one candidate who needs to create so much doubt in order to achieve his personal goals,” Vice Mayor Julie Testa told the Weekly. “It’s hard to watch; it’s hard to listen to.”
Over the past year and a half, City Manager Beaudin and his staff have come to learn that Pleasanton is facing a significant structural deficit that could cost the city tens of millions of dollars each year. In its general fund 10-year financial forecast, city officials have projected a yearly budget shortfall starting at $10,788,817 in 2026, with that number rising as high as $15,678,578 in 2030.
Staff have attributed the structural deficit to factors like rising personnel costs, inflation, slow real estate development, loss of revenue from hotel taxes and the city’s pandemic funds being depleted.
Other notable reasons include unfunded liability pension costs that remain at over $200 million and a $900 million infrastructure funding gap over the next decade to maintain community assets like buildings, parks, roads and pipes.
That’s why the City Council majority voted to place Measure PP — a sales tax increase for 10 years slated to bring in roughly $10 million in new annual revenue exclusively for the city, if passed by a simple majority of voters — on the November ballot this year. Mayor Karla Brown joined Testa and councilmembers Valerie Arkin and Jeff Nibert in advancing the measure to the ballot; Jack Balch, who is now challenging for mayor, cast the lone dissenting vote.
City officials have repeatedly said the half-cent sales tax increase is the best way the city can be positioned to balance its budget and maintain its essential services during these next few years. The other option staff have been holding onto as a backup plan if Measure PP doesn’t pass is making further cuts across various departments — including essential services such as police and fire.
That contingency list, which calls out service reductions such as closing a fire station, reducing police programs and limiting library services, has been one of the main talking points for Measure PP supporters.
“The unfortunate reality is should the city not be able to increase its revenues, there will be future catastrophic cuts to our city services,” Gray said.
Gray is a lifelong resident of Pleasanton who now works in the city’s Public Works Department.
He said he has seen the city try to save money by lapsing and not renewing various city contracts for things like lighting, lawn mowing and trash pickup services. He said he has also seen a 5% staff vacancy rate as well as multiple vacant part-time positions.
Gray also pointed out the $2.5 million in reductions the council approved earlier this year from the current fiscal year’s budget, which included the deferral of capital improvement projects such as the contentious skate park project at Ken Mercer Sports Park and the Century House renovation.
He said those cost-saving measures were cuts that have not been felt by the public, but if Measure PP does not pass, Pleasanton is going to see some major changes in the next few years to services that will in fact affect them.
“The next round of cuts — they will be deep, they will be significant,” he said.
Gray addressed some of the arguments that have been made by those who are against the revenue measure, specifically the narrative of the city being wasteful and overspending money.
He said the current council has done its best to address the structural deficit and the idea that the city is overspending on its employees is something that personally hurts Gray because he said their salaries are barely enough to live in the city or in the surrounding Bay Area.
Gray also said he believes Measure PP is being used as a wedge issue during this election and wished it wasn’t a bipartisan issue where the city’s mayoral opponents have become synonymous with the tax measure.
In addition to Gray’s AFSCME Local 955, other city employee unions like the Livermore-Pleasanton Firefighters Local 1974 and the Pleasanton Police Officers’ Association have publicly expressed their support for Measure PP.
During the July 16 council meeting, two PPOA members including president Brian Jewell said they have supported the revenue measure and believe it is a viable solution to the budget challenges.
LPFD Capt. Craig Freeman and another firefighter union member also spoke during the meeting, and Freeman has continuously spoken at various meetings including the Oct. 15 meeting where he said as a Livermore resident, he doesn’t want to see Pleasanton shut down a fire station.
“The Livermore Pleasanton Fire Department has always been running on a do more with less budget attitude,” he said. “Should Measure PP not pass, we will be left with one option: do less with less.”
Meanwhile Cheryl Cook-Kallio, who served on the Pleasanton City Council between 2006 and 2014, said she is no stranger to making tough budget decisions, especially when it comes to city employees.
Cook-Kallio, who currently represents Pleasanton on the Alameda County Board of Education, told the Weekly back then they knew the 2008 recession was looming and the city manager at the time took a 15% temporary pay cut while other senior staff similarly took lower percentage reductions.
She said the cuts came with a promise to make those employees whole again when possible but more importantly, it showed how leadership starts at the top, which is something she hasn’t seen come out of the current council.
“I think tone matters,” Cook-Kallio said. “I think that leadership matters.”
She said the city should have held more town hall meetings or looked at its priorities better over the years because the city knew it was losing revenues from its hotel tax and one-time pandemic money.
She said that’s why Pleasanton needs new leadership who will better handle these situations in the future and who will look at what is best for the entire city rather than a small demographic.
Longtime resident Vicky LaBarge also believes the current council is at fault for putting the city in a difficult financial position. She said at the Oct. 15 council meeting that the pro-PP campaign seems to be made up of city employees who are afraid for their jobs.
LaBarge also said the city is not including additional revenue streams into its projected budget assumption such as the city’s Section 115 Pension Trust Fund, which was created as an investment to help Pleasanton pay down its pension liabilities in the future. According to the city, the total market value for the trust fund at the end of the 2023-24 fiscal year was $51.1 million.
LaBarge and others on the committee against Measure PP have said that in accordance with the trust fund’s withdrawal policy guidelines, the city should have looked into drawing from that fund as early as the 2025-26 fiscal year, which is something the city could do if the city’s general fund has a structural deficit that needs to be addressed.
She said the city’s own pension consultants recommended using the trust fund starting in the 2025-26 year and the no campaign is simply asking to start one year earlier and to count those funds against projected budget deficit.
“How manipulative of this council and supporters of Measure PP to ask taxpayers to approve a sales tax increase by pretending you don’t intend to use the trust fund anytime during the next 10 years,” LaBarge said.
Miller also claimed that the city seems to be hiding the most recent unaudited actual year-end budget totals from 2023-24 until after the election because he has been asking to see that information for some months now but has not been able to get his hands on those public documents.
He said the city’s tax data from the past budget cycle is particularly important because he doesn’t agree with the city’s projected 3.5% increase in property taxes when historically the city has seen a 5.5% average increase over the past 10 years.
“There’s many things like that that suggest that the city is trying to hide the numbers or keep information from voters before they vote and that’s troublesome for me,” Miller said.
Miller also said that if the city raised its 3.5% projections by even 1%, it would show better assumptions and added that the no on PP side really just wants more accurate, up-to-date numbers.
But according to city communications manager Heather Tiernan, the city is not withholding any information.
“As a public entity, Pleasanton is required to complete financial audits annually, which is currently underway for fiscal year 2024 and should be completed by January 2025,” she said.
Tiernan said the city’s unaudited year-end financial reports are usually presented to the City Council in November or December and that the 2024 year-end financial report is on track to go to the council in November but is “not yet complete”. She said last year, the year-end report was presented in December.
“We are committed to presenting accurate financial information to the City Council and the public and working to have that report available as quickly as possible,” she said.
Regarding the trust fund, Tiernan said in early 2024 the council directed staff to hire an actuarial consultant to provide a long-term recommendation on how and when the City’s 115 Pension Trust should be used.
“Financial advisors, including the actuarial consultant, have recommended that the city refrain from using the pension trust funds in the near term to bridge the budget deficit,” Tiernan said. “Aggressive use of the trust could hinder the city’s ability to meet future pension obligations, particularly during the peak contribution years that are still ahead.”
Testa refuted the idea that the city is hiding any data, adding that she would be the first to look into that if she thought the city was up to something.
She said it’s hard to disprove something that doesn’t exist and that she recently spoke with a leader from Benicia who told her that city has been dealing with its own budget issues and its residents have been making similar accusations of leaders hiding money when it wasn’t true.
“Anyone who is really saying that our current council or our current city manager are responsible, that’s just not true and they know it’s not true,” Testa said. “Certainly, any past council would have a role to some level to share, but we shouldn’t be pointing fingers because … there’s been no malfeasance.”
