As part of a 501c(3) public charity, Santa Monica Next cannot endorse candidates for city office, but it can endorse ballot measures. We have previously urged voters to vote Yes on QS.
Measure K would place an additional 8% tax on privately owned parking lots raising the total tax to 18% to raise $6,700,000 annually to help fund city services. The parking tax fee would rise to 18%, but would not impact city-owned lots where the tax will remain at 10%. The measure requires a simple majority to pass on this November’s Ballot and the increase would begin on January 1.
To be honest, when Councilmember Jesse Zwick first proposed this increase, we were more excited about it than we were with the compromise measure placed on the ballot a couple of weeks later. Zwick’s measure spelled out what the $6,700,000 would be spent on: maintaining failing infrastructure, improving the safety of the city’s transportation grid, and restoring funding to bicycle and pedestrian programs cut as a result of the economic slowdown that came during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s not just that we support the programs that Zwick’s proposal would have funded, we generally believe that it’s good government to tell people exactly what new taxes and fees will be spent on. If the SMMUSD ballot measures QS and MM (the Malibu-specific version of QS) didn’t give an explanation of what they would be spent on, it would have been much harder lift to get our endorsement (and probably for the measure to get passed).
But the city’s deficit is a real crisis and the abundance of inexpensive car parking in America is a major cause of air pollution and Climate Change. The good more than outweighs the uncertainty on how the funds will be spent and we are comfortable urging voters to VOTE YES ON MEASURE K.
You can get more information on Measure K at the city’s election page or on this pamphlet prepared by the city.
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