August 12, 2009 at 11:38 PM

April 4, 2009

The question before Chula Vista voters, as Proposition A ballots go out Monday in a mail election, is whether the city's sales tax should be raised 1 cent for 10 years, to a whopping 9.75 percent. This would be on top of the 1 cent statewide sales tax hike which took effect this week, leaving Chula Vista tied with El Cajon and National City for the highest sales tax rate in San Diego County.

The question before Chula Vista voters, as well, is the city's future. What do they want in services and what are they able and willing to pay? Equally important, have Mayor Cheryl Cox and the City Council done enough to curb the excessive pensions paid to city workers – increasingly costly pensions for which the taxpayers pick up the entire tab? The undeniable truth is that the City Council has done almost nothing to address the pension crisis, which threatens to undermine Chula Vista's fiscal stability for years to come.

Chula Vista has three broad problems. Its tax revenues are actually declining from one year to the next, and 2010 is likely to be bleaker than a horrid 2009. Second, Chula Vista's tax base is too reliant on developer fees and on property taxes from wave after wave of homes sold at boomtown prices.

Third are the horrendous costs of the ticking pension time bomb and public safety benefits which the city never will be able to afford.

To be sure, the current council has made agonizing choices in curtailing some services, consolidating departments and cutting the staff by hundreds of employees. The city once had 1,264 employees. Now it is dipping below 1,000. Gone, too, are many part-timers, enough to fill another 100 full-time positions. Top management has given at the office, taking a hit of 18 to 20 percent in once-scheduled benefits.

Municipal employee unions agreed to postpone wage increases scheduled for this year and next, but that is only half the story and a great part of Chula Vista's unfinished business. In deferring the wage raises, public safety unions forced the contracts to be extended, putting off any kind of pension or benefit reform until too late. In the negotiations, Chula Vista's cops actually forced the city into paying $100 a month for retiree medical costs, in addition to their 14-karat-gold benefits and pensions.

Chula Vista's police are the highest paid in the county, can retire at age 50 at up to 90 percent of pay, and do not contribute a penny toward their half of the pension cost. Chula Vista cannot afford that. Chula Vista's firefighters, through inept scheduling, are guaranteed $91,000 or more a year. Can a city trying to shake off bedroom-community status really afford that?

What was City Manager Jim Sandoval's former department, planning and building, has several dozen employees to process a mere trickle of building permits for new construction. The painful reality is that situation cannot be allowed to continue....

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