Another measure to bring about a more equitable and fair local tax base would be to pass a proportional San Geronimo Valley Community Center facilities usage fee based on the average daily number of users present on the property. The objective of this fee is to restore balance to the local tax base. Several large property owners in the Valley who literally have hundreds of thousands of combined annual users of their property are profiting from access to our facilities without paying their fair share. This fee would end what is known as the “free rider” phenomenon.
The way the facilities use fee would work is that the more daily users of these facilities you have on your property the higher the fee would be collected to support local school district and community center services. The local tax burden would be restored by placing the largest responsibility for paying the fee on those property owners who gain the most use from the facilities.
Why is this necessary? Today the Valley is home to several extremely large businesses that generate a substantial income stream from tourists and customers that live outside the Valley and yet benefit from our services without contributing to them. As free riders these local businesses unfairly place the heavy inequitable burden for supporting these services on local residents.
The way that cities and counties such as San Francisco address this free rider phenomenon is to impose a luxury or tourist tax on such services. These taxes commonly are used to fund the arts which has the effect of stimulating a vibrant arts community but also jobs and income for artists and those who work in the arts such as carpenters, sound engineers, fashion designers, and actors for example.
However, as a school district we cannot issue a tourism tax but we can issue a fee based on use of services under Article 13D of the California Constitution.
For example, the following fee would create a fairer tax revenue burden by shifting the responsibility to pay local taxes to support our schools and community center to those with the greatest number of users. This is not unusual. Property and income taxes follow the same principle by scaling the responsibility to pay taxes based on how much one’s property is worth or how much one earns in income.
The other way a use fee makes our local tax base more equitable is that like a luxury tax it places all the burden on the consumption of luxuries such as maintaining a horse, going on a retreat, eating at a restaurant, staying at a hotel, or playing a round of golf. One need merely look at the high daily and monthly fees charged for a local retreat, to board a horse, or belong to the golf club to see that consumers of these services are living at the very top of the income and wealth brackets of our society.
The following fee imposes a tax per person per day that starts at 1/100th of a cent and maxes out at $1.00 per day. For example, a household of 4 people would pay merely 4/100ths of a cent per day which comes to 4 x 37 cents = $1.48 per year. You can barely buy one organic apple for that.
This fee generates nearly all of the revenue from local facilities that host 30 or more residential customers per day. It would not apply to non-residency sales of simple goods or services. As you can see below, my rough calculation below shows it would generate a minimum of $360,000 per year.
This amount would most likely be more than enough to restore all the cuts to teachers and instructional and other staff and even give the teachers and staff a pay raise—all measures the incumbents Richard and Denise are unwilling to do. There would probably even be money left over to pay for facilities upgrades without even further indebting our District’s to Wall Street on top of what we still owe from the 1997 bond measure.
Facilities Use Fee Scale:
1-10 users: .001 cents per day
example: at 1 per day: 37 cents per year
11-20 users: .01 cents per day
example: at 11 per day: $40.15 per year
21-29 users: .1 cents per day
example: at 21 per day: $766.50
30 and more users: $1.00 per day
example: at 30 per day = $10,950 per year (Serenity Knolls maximum guests)
example: at 40 per day = $14,600 per year (rough estimate for San Geronimo Golf Course)
example: at 100 per day = $36,500 (Dickson Ranch can accommodate at least 100)
at 822 per day = $300,000 per year (Spirit Rock estimated usage according to San Geronimo Valley Planning Group)
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