During public comment John Roush announced the petition to place parking on the November Ballot was turned in with approximately 2300 signatures. This should cause a suspension of the parking program. A motion was made to do away with paid parking altogether and look into alternatives. Sadly it did not pass. It was puzzling that Mayor Hamon has to have known about this for about a month but did not seem prepared to deal with the referendum at all. The petition was pre vetted and therefore it is highly unlikely that enough signatures will be rejected to cause the referendum. Courts have upheld referendums if they do not conform exactly to specifications.
The City Council voted 5-0 not to support the SLOCOG sales increase. It was observed taxpayers are just not supportive of this right now and are upset that the government spends a lot of money but allocates little to roads. Fred Strong commented that these projects are Regional and will not get done by City or County efforts. So we need the work done but it supposedly will require the passage of a sales tax. In my public comments I basically made the point that the County needs to prioritize roads and cut back unnecessary expenses so money can be used for regional projects. It comes out of sales tax money anyway, we should just be able to use existing sales revenues to fund regional projects seems logical.
Lastly, a number of FPPC complaints have been filed against Mayor Hamon. This did not come up with the Parking Referendum and the SLOCOG proposed sales tax being the hot items. I would expect this to come up at at the next meeting.