Sales Tax

Hindsight, as they often say, is 20-20. There is a lot of grousing about the fact that $9 million -- two more million than needed for immediate Bluebird Canyon landslide repairs -- were spent in 2002 by the city to pay for the Treasure Island Park near the Montage Resort & Spa. The park is truly lovely and a marvelous place to show off the beauties of Laguna's coastline, but spending that much on it now seems like...

Just days before a clash between private-property rights and Glendale’s redevelopment power is expected to come to a head over whether to back plans to shutter the Golden Key Hotel on Colorado Street and make it part of the Americana at Brand shopping center, experts say there may not be much of a fight. Golden Key owner Ray Patel has battled the plan at every step, rejecting Americana at Brand developer Rick Caruso’s $6-million buyout offer and unveiling his own plan to revamp his hotel.

Sales tax increase is misleading Talk about deception. The April 1 sales tax increase was described as a 1% increase. This is totally misleading. The sales tax in our area has been for some time 8.25% of the purchase price of taxable merchandise. On April 1 it was raised to 9.25%. That is a percentage increase of the sales tax rate of more than 11%. How anyone could run our state $42 billion in the hole is inconceivable. Instead of raising taxes we need to cut government spending.

Supervisor Michael Antonovich railed against a proposal to raise Los Angeles County’s sales tax by a half-cent to fund transportation projects Wednesday during the monthly meeting of local Republicans. The proposed sales-tax increase, approved by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board in July, could raise up to $40 billion for transit and highway projects — including funds for a proposed extension of the rail line known as the “subway to the sea” — over the next 30 years.

Josh Kleinbaum Glendale officials still want to hire 100 new police officers in the next six years. They'll just have to find a new way to pay for them. The city has already approved the first phase of the plan, which includes 25 new officers to be paid with current funds. But the rest of the plan relied on $9 million per year from Proposition A, a bill that would have increased sales tax in Los Angeles County by a half cent to raise money for local law enforcement.

Now that the cat is out of the bag and more is being discovered of the depth and breadth of the Caruso land giveaway, I was wondering how long it would take the Caruso forces to start chanting that the giveaway is fine. Not only fine, it's good for the city. Mr. Roland McGhie wants to use the land given to the original Galleria owners as justification for giving the Town Center property to Caruso. Excellent! It's a good idea to use the land given to the original Galleria owners as an example.

A new fire station for Montrose is high on the priority list for Glendale capital improvement projects, the city's financial chief said this week. Bob Franz gave the City Council a preliminary look at the upcoming two-year budget, though he cautioned the figures are subject to change. "We haven't received the budget requests from the departments yet," he said. The Montrose station has bee targeted for replacement for several years because of the age and size of the facility.

Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat who represents Glendale and Burbank, called for a Government Accountability Office investigation of the Internal Revenue Service practices regarding the tax-exempt status of churches and other houses of worship. Schiff requested a report from the IRS on its practices following reports that All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena was under investigation after an anti-war sermon given by the Rev. George Regas in 2004. Schiff joined two other members in a bipartisan request for a formal investigation.

Surprise, surprise! The budget holes facing Burbank, Glendale and just about every other city just keep getting deeper. It’s a sure thing that next year’s deficits will be even worse, even in reasonably well-run cities. America is undergoing a dramatic economic change. We no longer manufacture enough to produce high-paying jobs with good benefits that have fueled our consumer-driven economy since World War II. Most economists, and city officials for that matter, know our economic troubles today are not cyclical phenomena with recovery just around the corner.