Fire Safety Funding Needs a Better Plan Than an Oppressive New Tax

By Daniel Yukelson

Public Safety Must Come First

Public safety must always remain an absolute priority. And my family and I are always extremely supportive of our first responders. Pasadena and any other local and regional jurisdiction should always have the best and most up-to-date facilities, equipment, and training to ensure the highest levels of public safety to ensure the health and welfare of our communities.

Why Measure PFD Is the Wrong Solution

But Pasadena’s Measure PFD is the wrong solution. It imposes a broad-benefit tax on a narrow segment of the local community. It ignores property value, so any owner of a luxury home in Oak Knoll would pay the same tax as a homeowner of a similar-sized home in neighborhoods like Villa Parke or Northwest Pasadena. It treats Pasadena residents like bottomless piggy banks, constantly looking to tax them first rather than improving accountability. This makes no sense!

What Measure PFD accomplishes is merely to impose a progressive and punishing tax on just one segment of the Pasadena community –property owners. Pasadena’s property owners will be forced to foot the bill without any accountability from the City or any other segment of the Pasadena community.

Public Safety Benefits the Entire Community

Our fire, paramedics, and police departments benefit anyone and everyone who lives in or merely visits the City of Pasadena on any given day. If after a full assessment of accountability, it is found that the City requires additional funds to improve and maintain public safety at the highest levels, those funds must come from the public in general, such as through a sales tax or other general tax, rather than a tax merely targeted at and borne by property owners.

Start With Accountability and Alternatives

But the City has not looked at any other alternatives. Let’s start there! Good governance means that the City should operate like any business by first evaluating its cost structure before imposing a further burden like taxes. To date, the City has shown no evidence of identifying potential operational efficiencies or cost reduction measures it could take to fund all or a portion of the newly proposed tax gains. That’s just poor management and terrible judgment. In virtually all cities and counties, the budgets for our first responders are supported out of general funds and never through special taxes, and accordingly, Measure PFD sets a terrible precedent. Once the City of Pasadena drinks from this well, there’s no stopping it from drinking out of others and imposing more taxes.

The Impact on Pasadena Rental Housing Providers

And for property owners now subject to the City’s rent control regime imposed under Measure H, there is no way to recover the cost of the proposed Measure PFD. Rental housing providers in Pasadena are subject to one of the most draconian and restrictive rent control regimes in the country, and for some who operate their buildings at the margin between profit and loss, this new property tax could tip the scales and force them to sell or face the far worse outcome of foreclosure.

When There’s a New Tax, Somebody Always Must Pay

When there’s a new tax, somebody always must pay. First in line for Measure PFD are businesses, housing providers, and homeowners who will all initially pay for Measure PFD and Pasadena’s lack of accountability. But then, businesses and housing providers must somehow recover these new costs, and over time they will inevitably be forced to increase their prices and then everyone in the community pays. Even when it comes to homeowners, they also pay, but they have budgets to balance and will surely cut back on their spending by, perhaps, cutting back on repair and maintenance projects or other spending, which generates less sales and income tax revenue the City receives and benefits from directly and indirectly.