Like many
cities across the country, Petaluma may put a proposed tax increase on the
November ballot. The great recession
took a big chunk of the municipal budget and the economic recovery, although
stronger than many had feared, hasn’t provided adequate revenue to address backlogged
needs, some of which date from before the recession.
Following my
personal policy of “We built this stuff, we really should take care of it”, I
expect to support any proposal that the City Council puts on the ballot. And I’ll likely encourage others to do the
same.
But I
reserve the right to dissent from how the City is framing the debate, which is based
around the question, "Will today's Petaluma become the new normal or do we
want to return to the Petaluma we all enjoyed just a few years ago and improve
upon that?"
Wikipedia
defines “false dilemma” as an “informal fallacy that involves a situation in
which limited alternatives are considered, when in fact there is at least one
additional option.” I suggest the City’s
question is a textbook false dilemma.
To begin, the
question draws a silky gauze of nostalgia over the Petaluma of “just a few
years ago”. To refresh our memories, concerns about
potholes and other municipal deficiencies began more than a decade ago, long
before the recession and far more than “just a few years ago”.
Also, levels
of personal and public debt, used to finance “the Petaluma we all enjoyed”,
have been increasing steadily since the 1970s and may be reaching unsustainable
levels. To think that we can return to a
halcyon time and even “improve upon that” with a tax increase is a false hope.
Nor does the
implicit alternative, that rejecting the tax increase will result in the
current Petaluma becoming “the new normal”, stand up to scrutiny. We’re barely treading water now. To hope that we can keep treading
indefinitely is unrealistic. It’s more
likely that the tax measure will be needed just to maintain the status quo as
the new normal.
And a black
cloud of further distress may be looming just over the horizon. I recently chatted with a North Bay city
manager about municipal finances throughout the North Bay. I noted the hypothesis of many that the
recovery from the recession was managed perhaps too skillfully, with the result
that many of the structural deficiencies in the economy, which are often
scrubbed out by a long recession, remain in place making us prone to another
recession.
I asked the
city manager what would happen to his city in the event of another
recession. He pondered for a moment,
shuddered, and then said “I hope I’m retired by then.”
I don’t
intend for this post to be a jeremiad about the inevitability of civic
distress. Indeed, I don’t believe that
municipal fiscal collapse is inevitable.
But the best path is neither placidly accepting the current reality as
the new normal nor trying to improve upon a past that never was. It’s passing the tax measure and using the
financial infusion to restructure the city to a more financial sustainable
model. And urbanism must be an essential
element of that restructuring.
That’s the
option that Petaluma omitted in the false dilemma formulation.
The City
will host a Town Hall Meeting on Tuesday, May 13 to discuss the question. The meeting will convene at 6:00pm in the
Petaluma Community Center. Unfortunately,
I won’t be able to attend. I’ll be on a
long-scheduled trip to Stockton. (I’ll
be there only to watch baseball games, but will still feel like I’m sticking my
head into the jaws of municipal fiscal dysfunction.)
Even though
I can’t be there, I encourage everyone to attend the Town Hall Meeting. I hope
what I’ve written above provides a lens through which to view the discussion.
Schedule Notes
The monthly
Petaluma Urban Chat meeting was scheduled for Tuesday the 13th, the same
evening as the Town Hall Meeting. By
vote of Urban Chat participants, we’ll forego the May meeting in deference to the
Town Hall Meeting and in the hope that the Urban Chat folks will instead attend
the Town Hall Meeting. The next Urban
Chat meeting will be on June 10.
Also, I
earlier wrote of my plan to make baseball gameday visits to seven North Bay and Greater
Bay Area teams. All ballclub schedules
are now published, so I can pick my visits.
San Rafael: Friday,
June 13 – Pittsburg Mettle at San Rafael Pacifics, first pitch 7:05pm
Alameda: Sunday,
June 15 – Sacramento Spikes at Neptune Beach Pearl, first pitch time not yet
announced
Healdsburg: Monday,
June 16 – Sonoma County Chili Gods at Healdsburg Prune Packers, first pitch
7:00pm
Walnut Creek
(actually Orinda): Sunday, July 6, Neptune Beach Pearl at Walnut Creek
Crawdads, first pitch 12:00pm
Sonoma: Sunday, July
27 – San Rafael Pacifics at Sonoma Stompers, first pitch time not yet announced
Vallejo: Saturday,
August 2 - San Rafael Pacifics at Vallejo Admirals, first pitch 5:05pm
Pittsburg: Saturday,
August 30 - Sonoma Stompers at Pittsburg Mettle, first pitch 7:00pm
My plan is to
arrive in town a couple of hours before each gametime, giving an opportunity to
look at the downtown or another interesting walkable urban district.
I’ll attend
all games regardless of whether others join me, but others are certainly
welcome. If you’d like to catch a little
baseball and urbanism, let me know. We
can make arrangements as the games approach.
As always,
your questions or comments will be appreciated.
Please comment below or email me.
And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)
No comments:
Post a Comment