VOTE: Do You Support Or Oppose a Sales Tax to Provide School Funding?

Facing an come November, the has taken an unprecedented step in the hopes of preventing crippling cuts to school services by asking the to put a general sales tax before voters on the November 6 ballot.

"This is not something we've ever done before," said Jaime Rosso, a GUSD Board of Education member on the tax. "We've been forced into a position of fending for ourselves rather than just waiting for further and further [state] cuts."

The board has proposed implementing a quarter-cent or a half-cent general sales tax. Potential revenue for the district would be $2.8 million or $5.6 million each year for eight years.

To determine the feasibility of voter approval for the tax, the district hired San Francisco-based consulting firm TBWB Strategies to survey 501 likely November voters.

According to survey documents, , music to the district's ears as the half-cent tax would likely generate the most revenue.

Reasons for a Sales Tax

Superintendent Debbie Flores said that the board initially considered pursuing a parcel tax but nixed that option after discovering it would only generate between one and two million dollars a year.

Rosso also said that a sales tax is the best option for not only the district but also the city as the burden of payment would be dispersed over a wider swath of the population, including non-Gilroy residents.

"The sales tax option allows us to spread the cost and the revenues around a much bigger group in the community," he said. "It's a very incremental amount and has the potential to raise a lot more money [than a parcel tax]."

Arguments Against a Tax

Survey documents show that surveyors presented respondents with a host of arguments reportedly said by opponents of the tax. Those include:

• Funds from this measure would go into Gilroy's general fund which means the city can spend revenue on whatever it wants. We can't trust that the money will be spent on things that really matter.
• Revenue from this measure will go toward bloated government salaries and pensions.
• We are already paying for a bond measure for local schools, and with the down economy and so many people out of work, we cannot afford to raise taxes right now.
• There is already a statewide sales tax measure that addresses education; an additional sales tax increase in Gilroy would make our total sales tax way too high.

Rosso also said that he’s spoken with local business owners about a sales tax. While the general argument is that a sales tax makes it harder to do business, he said, a half-cent “isn’t going to make a difference whether people do business or not.”

The survey concluded that while the negative messaging had an impact on voter opinion of the tax, approval remained above 50 percent.

Where do you stand on the proposed sales tax? If it came to a vote today, would you vote for or against it?

Take our poll and tell us in the comments what you think about either a quarter-cent tax, a half-cent tax or no tax at all. Do you have any alternate solutions?

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