On Tuesday June 5, Mountain View City Council is considering a ballot measure to fund high priorities for transportation and possibly affordable housing.

Mountain View is considering:
* An employer tax
* A cannabis tax
* A hotel tax increase

The transportation priorities cited in the staff report include a number of good-sized projects that the the city has been planning for years, including:

* Automated Guideway Transit connecting the downtown transit center to North Bayshore
* Two rail/road grade separations (Rengstorff Avenue and Castro Street)
* Downtown Transit Center improvements
* Bike/pedestrian improvements
* Bernardo Avenue undercrossing
* Community shuttle
* Connecting the NASA light rail station to North Bayshore
* New Charleston Road undercrossing

Council may also consider funding for affordable housing. The city has been working to add substantial amounts of multi-family housing, especially near job centers, to address a jobs/housing imbalance and housing affordability crisis, and incommuting traffic. Mountain View has been focusing on evolving car-centric single-use business parks into mixed-use neighborhoods, and these areas, including North Bayshore and East Whisman, need substantial transportation investments to support a denser population with cars as a smaller share of the transportation mix.

The NASA Light Rail/NBS connection is still in an early phase of planning, and the Charleston undercrossing was listed as part of the Shoreline Transportation Plan for North Bayshore but hasn’t been fleshed out yet.

There is an important policy question about whether a business tax should be:
* a specific tax that requires 2/3 to pass (but voters sometimes prefer the specificity)
* a general tax requiring 50% (with a nonbinding letter of direction from the council)

Mountain View has been consistent in its transportation planning with a focus on sustainable transportation, so it seems like a general tax with letter of direction seems fairly likely to be spent according to the stated intent.
The city’s polling indicates support for an employer tax that is focused specifically on transportation is essentially the same as support for a general-purpose measure.

One factor in the discussion is a statewide measure that may be on the ballot in November, that would require local taxes to require a two-thirds vote.

There are also detailed questions about what the level would be (in a range that would raise between $5 and $10M per year). Council is considering a variety of options, most of which have lower rates for small businesses (see an option recommended by the Council revenue measure subcommittee, below).

Mountain View has many small businesses and seven large businesses including Google which is by far the largest. In the proposal in the table above, at the $10 million target, 84 percent of the revenue is generated by the largest seven companies, with 66 percent coming from Google.

The employer tax seems very good fit for transportation improvements since employers benefit from most of the improvements.  Since the largest businesses provide substantial private transportation for their employees, investments in public transportation could help them reduce reliance on costly private transportation.

If the business community was strongly opposed, this could result in well-funded opposition. So far, Mountain View’s business community has been neither supportive nor opposed to the business tax. Most of the comments at a meeting last week held by the council’s revenue subcommittee were strongly favorable of a business tax.

What do you think?