Cannabis tax helps public safety
California City allocates nearly $970,000 from past three fiscal years
CALIFORNIA CITY — The City Council approved to amend its fiscal budget and allocate money collected from cannabis tax to the public safety fund.
City Manager Anna Linn proposed to the Council to transfer $969,206.68 of cannabis tax collected from fiscal years 201819, 2019-20 and what has been collected so far from 2020-21 to replenish the police and fire department budgets.
Because the cannabis tax collected for 2018-19 and 2019-20 are part of the general reserves, the Council needed to approve the allocation with a four-fifths vote which did not happen.
The Council did, however, agree, on a 3-2 vote, to allocate $509,158 in cannabis taxes along with future collections from the rest of the current fiscal year to be used in the public safety fund.
The City in 2018 passed Measure C, which was structured to reduce the special tax rate set at $182.50 as cannabis tax, sales tax and property tax increased.
In 2019, the prior Council gave direction to reduce the special tax to $153 which resulted in cutting the public safety budget by over $1 million during the mid-budget cycle.
Mayor Pro Tem Nick Lessenevitch didn’t agree with Linn’s proposal and said the cannabis revenue was not made to increase the police and fire department’s
budget but to offset the special tax.
“Here you are potentially saying that as we raise revenue from cannabis, that you’re going to allow the police and fire departments to raise their budgets correspondingly,” he said. “We will never be able to absorb police and fire into the general fund.”
Lessenevitch said the Council needs to question what happened with the budget and how they have allowed the expenditures to get beyond what they think is a reasonable service to the community.
“Now I challenge us to actually look at the budgets and look at collections and look at how money has been spent because we have some large issues that we are addressing,” he said.
Mayor Jeanie O’Laughlin said historically police and fire seem to always be over budget and are never held to their budget.
“So if I look at the police department, their retained earnings is a negative $1.1 million,” she said. “They’re running a deficit this year. If you look at fire department, (it) has about a negative $1 million as well.”
O’Laughlin said she would like to review what the revenues were going back three years and compare those to the expenses if the departments stayed at their original budget with the $182.50 tax rate in mind.
Linn expressed her frustrations and said that while she agrees with the points everyone is making, no one is focusing on the source of the problem.
“This year is a mess and it’s a mess because of the council, because of management, and we’re blaming it on fire and PD,” she said.