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BoS to ask Voters to Approve a Tax for Fire Agencies

November 12, 2019 — The Board of Supervisors agreed unanimously, with Supervisor John McCowen absent, to ask voters to approve a tax on private campgrounds in the unincorporated areas of the county, to fund fire districts. The measure is expected to appear on the March 2020 ballot. 

Last year, 53.9% of voters declined to approve Measure G, a proposal to require guests at private campgrounds to pay a 10% transient occupancy tax, like guests in short term vacation rentals in structures will all the modern amenities. 

In January of 2018, the treasurer tax collector’s office provided a brief history of three enforcement projects aimed at collecting tax from a variety of short-term rentals. Starting in 2015, county staff began to track down 59 non-compliant short term rentals on the vacation rental by owner platform, and had collected close to $400,000 by 2017. 

The second project focused on two other short term rental platforms: Airbnb and Flipkey. With the help of an outside service called Host Compliance, the county collected more than $200,000 in tax revenue, and expected to collect about a quarter of a million per year going forward. 

The third project found that 27 private campgrounds, with 354 tent sites and 1,110 RV sites were not subject to the tax, due to what Supervisor Dan Gjerde calls a loophole in the law. In 1983, a Senate Bill authorized cities and counties to impose a transient occupancy tax on private campgrounds and RV parks, following voter approval. The Board of Supervisors in Mendocino County declined to accept the privilege, thereby missing out on what the 2018 staff memo estimates is about one million dollars a year. 

Last year’s failed tax proposal did not allocate the anticipated funds to any particular purpose. An owner and manager of two RV parks, an IT engineer, and the owner of the Sea Glass Museum in Fort Bragg signed the argument against the measure, asserting that “Most people who stay at campgrounds are not wealthy;” and that, “Some will vacation in other counties where this tax does not exist.” 

The latest proposal is to make the measure a general tax with an advisory measure attached to it, directing that 75% of the revenue be divided equally among the county’s 21 local fire agencies and the remaining 25% to be spent according to an annual recommendation from the fire chiefs’ association.

The advisory measure is legally non-binding, relying on voters to hold their local government accountable to spend the money as laid out. This means the ballot measure would pass with just over 50% of the electorate, as opposed to a special tax, which requires a two-thirds majority. The general tax plus advisory measure is a favorite target of taxpayer rights groups, which have challenged several similarly structured tax proposals in Mendocino County. But with the unanimous vote by the four supervisors present at last week’s meeting, the final vote will be at the ballot box.

 

Local News