The tax, though, would not kick in — even if voters do OK it — until the county wins approval of its own levy.
The City Council reluctantly voted 4-1 this week — with anti-tax Councilman Aurelio Mattucci dissenting and Councilman Geoff Rizzo, a retired police officer, absent — to place the tax ballot measure before voters in the March 2020 election, even though it was more than the half-cent increase originally proposed.
Finance Director Eric Tsao had warned council members that staff didn’t believe city voters would support the higher tax rate. Redondo Beach nixed a similar tax measure Tuesday, Dec. 3.
Both members of the public and council took exception with city staff’s characterization of the proposed measure as a public safety issue, given the increasingly fragile state of Torrance’s finances, caused by unpaid pension liabilities. A recent state report had observed that Torrance was just outside a group of cities at high risk of fiscal issues because of the debt that’s cutting into services provided to residents.
Mattucci described the measure’s description — the “Torrance Financial Stability/Public Safety Protection Measure” — as deceiving.
“We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem,” he said at Tuesday’s council meeting. “This is something Torrance doesn’t need right now.”
But a majority of the council observed that if the city didn’t ask voters whether they should increase the sales tax limit to the permitted state cap of 10.25%, another agency, such as the county or South Coast Air Quality Management District, could.
The city’s current rate is 9.5%.
uncilman George Chen called it a “preemptive strike.”
“Once we protect ourselves, we don’t have to enact it,” he said. “Why don’t we get to 10.25%, so no-one gets that 25 cents on us?”
Mayor Pat Furey described Torrance as a “donor city” because it doesn’t get back a fair share of the taxes it contributes.
Councilman Tim Goodrich contended the issue had nothing to do with grabbing cash to pay for generous pension benefits because city staff had said those payments to the state would soon decline.
The last city budget approved earlier this year, however, observed those estimates were overly optimistic and that costs had yet to drop.
Still, Goodrich, who observed many other cities had made the same move, said this was a matter of local control.
“I’m tired of the county fleecing us and us having no control,” he said. “We might as well keep the money here in our community.
“If we don’t do this,” Goodrich added, “we’re really just taking a gamble with Torrance taxpayers money to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.”
The election is March 3.