COMMUNITY OPPOSITION TO THE DOCK TAX GROWS
The Newport Beach City Council recently adopted a $263 million budget, then boasted about a $100 million surplus, and talked about moving into a $130 million new City Hall by December. Then they told us they need more of our money to maintain the Tidelands.
Now they are considering a 20% tax on marinas and residential docks because they “need more money.”
80% of the budget goes to salaries and benefits for city employees. Newport Beach has more employees per capita than any city but Laguna Beach.
According to some fine research done in 2010 by Jack Wu while writing for the Newport Beach Independent (he now writes a weekly column in the Daily Pilot), every 88 Newport residents have their own city employee. Costa Mesa’s 116,000 residents have 170 city employees per resident. Huntington Beach, another full service city with miles of beaches and a significant pleasure boat harbor, has nearly 200,000 people. Huntington Beach services a community with a population twice the size of Newport’s and geographically larger with about 300 more employees.
Friends, there is a reason the city wants to tax our docks – the insatiable thirst for new money to fund employees and pensions never ends.
We need to fight back. We need to make our voice heard.
YOU CAN HELP BY DISPLAYING A STOP THE DOCK TAX SIGN.