JUDGE TO RULE ON LEMON GROVE TAX MEASURE MARCH 20

LEMON GROVE

San Diego Superior Court Judge Gregory W. Pollack on Friday postponed a hearing to decide the validity of a sales tax measure on the March 3 ballot in Lemon Grove.

Pollack said he would not make a ruling on a legal challenge brought by a Lemon Grove resident until March 20. Measure S asks voters to approve a bump in the sales tax from 7.75 percent to 8.5 percent.

Proponents estimate that a higher sales tax could generate about $3 million in new revenue for the city’s General Fund. The city is looking at a deficit of more than $219,000 at the end of this fiscal year, and a projected $800,000 deficit in the 2020-21 fiscal year and a nearly $1.2 million budget deficit by the end of 2021-22.

In explaining his reasons for delaying the hearing, Pollack wrote: “The court is concerned that its publicly available decision, either upholding or invalidating the initiative on February 21, 2020, a date before the election, could unfairly inf luence the voters, perhaps causing some voters to reflexively vote in favor of the initiative upon learning of the court’s upholding the validity of the initiative, or, alternatively, causing some voters to reflexively vote against the initiative upon learning of the court’s having found the initiative legally invalid.”

Pollack first heard the case in December, considering arguments from John L. Wood, who had filed a complaint against “Vote Yes for the Lemon Grove Sales Tax” proponents Yadira Altamirano, Jay Bass and George

Gastil. Also named in the lawsuit are Lemon Grove City Clerk Shelley Chapel and County Registrar of Voters Michael Vu.

Wood contends the ballot measure certified last summer by Chapel and then approved by the City Council in November should be declared invalid because the Vote Yes group failed to follow state election code. Wood said he filed the complaint on behalf of “Lemon Grove Neighbors Against the Lifetime Tax,” a group spearheaded by Mary England, a former Lemon Grove city councilwoman who is president and CEO of the La Mesa Chamber of Commerce. Elections attorney and La Mesa City Councilman Bill Baber is the committee’s assistant treasurer.

The complaint says the “Yes” group didn’t comply with the part of the state elections code that requires the publishing of Altamirano, Bass and Gastil’s names in a newspaper of record. They say that the city is complicit in accepting the measure as ballot ready. The East County Californian notice printed on July 24 had the required title and summary of the measure, but did not include the names of the people behind it.

Of leaving the names out of The Californian, Altamirano, the “Yes” campaign’s leader, said, “It was a small technicality, there wasn’t a (hidden) reason for it, it was an oversight. We know that it is a law to have that information published, but we had that information on our website, on the city’s website, in newspaper stories and online.”

In court on the morning of Dec. 11, the plaintiffs’ attorney Cory Briggs by phone had requested Pollack provide a hearing date that would come before the printing of the March election ballots. Ballots started being typeset, proofed and printed on Dec. 27, according to Vu. But Pollack at that time said he was not able to do that and instead set a date of Feb. 21.

In his ruling, Pollack wrote, “recognizing that the initiative will be on the ballot irrespective of this court’s ruling on its validity, in the interests of justice the court believes that the hearing on petitioner’s writ challenging the legal viability of the initiative ought to be continued” and set a date of March 20.

“At that time, if the voters have defeated the initiative, plaintiffs’ petition will be moot. If, however, the voters have passed the initiative, the court can rule on its legal validity,” he wrote.

“The issue of whether there was substantial compliance can certainly be determined postelection,” he wrote.

Altamirano, appointed to the Lemon Grove City Council on Dec. 3 to finish out the term of Matt Mendoza, who resigned in November, said she thought it was a good idea that Pollack continued the hearing until after the election and said Measure S will greatly “determine the future of Lemon Grove.”

Gastil said he was hopeful Lemon Grove voters would pass the measure but that if it doesn’t pass, or if Pollack should rule against the “Yes” group, he hoped the City Council would put it on the November ballot.

karen.pearlman@ sduniontribune.com