For years now, I have been urging the city to not represent Measure G/S, even making it inside of courtrooms to do so. Yet, once again we have a telling misrepresentation of facts by the City of Cotati. Time once again for me to give the facts and the whole truth on Measure S.
This statement is false and misrepresents the pandemic's effects.
In 2020, with the continued economic crisis around the Covid-19 epidemic, the City once again took the same Measure to the community. This new Measure S continued existing, voter-approved locally controlled funding with no increase in tax rate.
Measure S funding would continue to stay local, and none could be taken by the State.
Please see the following revenue chart, that shows the facts about the revenues received during the pandemic. As you can see, the city of Cotati had no significant revenue losses due to the pandemic. For the fiscal year ending 2022, the Measure G/S actually increased approximately $800k than before the pandemic. In addition, the City of Cotati received $1.7 million from the American Rescue Act for pandemic uses, but provided very limited pandemic services. The reasons for Measure S to be here is because of a greater need....for the City to take out $12 million in bonds.
Here is the truth about why Measure G was turned into a forever tax in 2020, which was three years before the measure sunsetted. The only change to Measure G was to make it a forever tax....this was to guarantee income from Measure G/S into the distant future to use as securities for $12 million in bonds that have been set up over 2021-2023 for unfunded pension liability costs and also for critical street repairs. The City of Cotati also put up our streets and some city buildings as collateral for these bonds.
How do I know all of this? Because I took the City of Cotati to Sonoma County Superior Court in the summer of 2020 over the ballot wording of Measure G/S being misleading. I cited 10 reasons why the ballot measure wording was misleading or misinformation. Judge Nadler ordered the city of Cotati to show cause why the Measure S should not be stricken from the November 2020 ballot as misleading. Judge Nadler allowed Measure S to stay on the ballot because there was not time to re-notice less misleading ballot wording for the Registrar of Voters, and he believed natural opposition would get the word out about the
PUBLIC COMMENT RECEIVED
truth of the ballot measure. Meanwhile, I received 24/7 retaliation for filing this, including being threatened with paying the city's attorney fees and costs.
So, here we are 2 1/2 years later, and it is the same misleading information, now expanded to include falsehoods about the effect of the pandemic and why Measure S was put on the ballot three years early in 2020.
Please council members, do not accept this report as written. The citizens deserve to know the truth and whole truth about Measure S, not "spin".
Sincerely,
Laurie Alderman
Cotati