By Robert Haugh
In November, Santa Clara County will ask voters to approve a sales tax hike for general County services. It’ll be on the ballot as Measure A.
Superior Court Judge Carol Overton’s ruling last week disallowed a challenge from voters who said there was no legitimate County fiscal emergency and the measure should be on a regularly scheduled election, like November 2026.
However, Overton did order officials to strike President Donald Trump’s name from ballot language. She sided with taxpayer advocates who argued the language was misleading and biased.
Her order also requires other edits to the ballot description. Details of those changes are still being finalized.
The sales tax measure was rushed onto the November ballot after the Board of Supervisors declared a “fiscal emergency” tied to hospital funding.
Supervisor Susan Ellenberg defended the proposal in an August 6 email to constituents, warning of “enormous threats” to health care and safety-net services.
Ellenberg is vice chair of the Board’s Finance and Government Operations Subcommittee that is suppose to identify cost-saving recommendations.
If approved, the measure would raise the base countywide sales tax from 9.125% to 9.75%.
Some cities would go even higher: San Jose and Milpitas would reach 10%, while Campbell would hit 10.5%, the highest in the county.
Santa Clara’s rate would rise to 9.875%.
“Governments continue to live beyond their means and instead of being fiscally responsible, they simply come to residents with their hand out wanting more.”
Amen! Our City is already operating with a $32M fiscal deficit. Then there’s the $400M municipal bond with interest to pay off for years to come. Guess who will pay for that? YOU!
It will show up buried in small print for years to come on your property tax bill!
And then there’s the substantial costs the City Manager and City Attorney may have incurred due to poor legal advice and badly negotiated contracts with the 49’ers, FIFE, etc.
It’s amazing the damage just 5 people can do. Vote them out!
No.
I will vote no. This spending of my money without being responsible about it must end. You are having “fiscal” problems because you either steal it, misappropriate it, or chase people out of the state. And healthcare? Don’t get me started. Problems started occurring because of the ACA then you all doubled down on making healthcare workers put poison in their arm or lose their jobs.
Dana, Thanks for posting this. By the way, I could not agree more with you. That’s also why we have budgets…
Are there any local businesses that could contribute more, or at least what they were suppose to pay us?
That would be a great place to start in my opinion.
Pretty sure NVIDIA is paying their fair share, any much smaller companies still trying to get us to pay for more and more of their operating cost?
Let’s look at Levi Stadium as being an asset to our City and not a liability to our City.
Sounds like a much better solution.
Burt Field
78′ Buchser Grad
Governments continue to live beyond their means and instead of being fiscally responsible, they simply come to residents with their hand out wanting more.
Sales taxes at or above 10% are simply ridiculous.
I strongly urge a big NO to more taxes!