Last June, the Fullerton city Council tasked the Infrastructure and Natural Resources (INRAC) Committee with studying alternatives and making a recommendation to address Fullerton’s infrastructure needs. The committee has been meeting twice a month since then to develop the recommendation. On January 23rd, we held an evening meeting in the Council Chambers at City Hall to present our recommendations and get feedback from the public.
The committee looked at all aspects of Fullerton Infrastructure, including roads, alleyways, bridges, buildings, lights, sewer systems and more. For each type of infrastructure, we looked at the current budget, and compared that budget to the cities needs. We focused particularly on streets, since repairs have not kept up with wear and tear, over many years. To read an article about these findings click HERE. We then looked into potential sources of funding to address our aging infrastructure.
We wanted to make sure the highest priority needs were met, so we categorized the infrastructure requirements into Level 1 (high), level 2 and level 3 priorities. Streets, bridges, major building repairs and ADA (building standards) requirements were deemed the highest priority. We have a $14M shortfall for our high priority needs. Our level 2 items (parking lots and parking structures, parks and trails, landscape maintenance, alleys and storm drains) have a $9M shortfall.
With this knowledge, the committee is aiming to increase our annual revenue by $24M, primarily to address the level 1 and level 2 items. We looked into grants, but quickly found out that very few grants are available for infrastructure. We also ruled out bonds, since bonds are best for one-time needs, and our infrastructure needs are ongoing. We considered a parcel tax, but felt that would place the entire burden on property owners.
We also considered other ways to increase revenue for infrastructure, such as contracting out more city services, increasing economic development in the city, revenue from other sources such as cannabis sales and taxes on short term revenue. While some of these sources of increased revenue for the city may eventually be implemented, the new revenue they will generate will fall far short of what is needed to upgrade our roads and other high-priority infrastructure needs. Thus we decided to recommend a sales tax, since that will be paid by both residents and non-residents who shop and dine in Fullerton.
Several neighboring cities have raised their sales taxes:
2008 La Habra
2014 Stanton
2016 Fountain Valley, La Palma, Westminster
2018 Garden Grove, Placentia, Santa Ana (1.5%)
Voters will have to approve a sales tax increase. The Committee will recommend a 1¢ special sales tax that will require support from 2/3 of the voters to ensure revenues are spent on infrastructure.
The recommendation of a special sales tax would yield approximately $24-million annually.
The committee’s next steps are to review the comments we received from the public and post applicable responses on the INRAC website, make any final changes to the recommendation based on the public feedback, and then present our formal recommendation to the council.
As a reminder to the public, this is a recommendation only, and the Council will make the final decision.
For more details, links to both the presentation and the video can be found at the INRAC web page HERE. under the ‘Community Presentations’ section.
Patty Tutor is a member of the Fullerton Infrastructure and Natural Resources Committee.
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First of all, thank you for your and other committee members’ time and hard work on INRAC.
Thank you for writing this concise explanation of INRAC’s decision making process used to make this recommendation.
That said, I think the committee should have scaled back the priorities to road maintenance alone. There is too much thrown into this to appear fungible and it will be very difficult to track progress and maintain accountability.
We have a huge problem with our roads. The city has a poor rack record of being able to perform as promised (water infrastructure comes to mind primarily). I think it is enough to just concentrate on roads and alley’s (which by the way should be under the same category since the city redefined alleys as roads specifically to allow the city to use street funds for alley’s).
I would support a lesser tax expressly for street repairs with a long term plan laid out and a means to end the tax if the city is unable to make improvements as promised.
A lower sales tax might also help reduce the likelihood of people shopping outside the city to avoid the additional tax.
Again, thank you for your efforts.
I’m in. The money has got to come from somewhere.
Fullerton roads are at dangerous levels. This special sales tax to fix the roads in Fullerton must get the job done and ASAP., Fix now or bust !!
I would rather have a 2/3 sales tax that is earmarked specifically for the roads than another general sales tax that seems to get swallowed up in raises for the powers that be! The INRAC committee made a bold move here, as Im sure the city council would prefer to get their hands on this, but this ensures it only goes to roads…. and we all know that we need to fix our roads ASAP this tax would ensure that the roads FINALLY get fixed!