The Canyon Lake City Council this week voted unanimously to place a citizen-backed initiative to increase the city’s sales tax rate by 1% on the November ballot.
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“We’re pushing to be on the ballot this November, and hoping that the city council will endorse this, and we can see what we can do with these funds to level up the fire department and the police department to give Canyon Lake [residents] what they deserve,” Fire Captain Tim O’Marra, who launched the effort, said at the August 5 meeting. “Canyon Lakers deserve a great fire department and great police department.”
Back in April, a coalition of residents submitted a notice of intent to circulate a petition for the Canyon Lake Public Safety and Emergency Response Protection Measure. In order to be successful, the petition needed a minimum of 845 signatures. The following month, the group submitted the petition with 1,113 signatures to the city clerk.
The Riverside County Registrar of Voters (ROV) in June validated 903 of the signatures and deemed the petition sufficient for the measure to be included on the ballot.
“We contacted more than 2,500 people door-to-door, boots on the ground, talking to individuals and seeing what they want [from] their fire department and…same with the police,” O’Marra said. “We’re on a first name basis with these individuals, we know who they are, and it is important to them to have a community fire department.”
As a result of that effort, Canyon Lake voters will now get to decide this November whether they support the 1% sales tax increase, which would bring the city’s sales tax rate to 8.75% and put it in line with most other Riverside County cities.
If approved by a majority of voters, the tax would generate an estimated $1.14 million per year with the funds required to be used only for the city’s police, fire, paramedic and emergency response services along with specified existing EMS subscription fee, property-tax fire, and utility-users-tax revenues. The funding would be subject to annual independent audits.
As part of the council’s action calling for the election, the council members also established the procedure for the preparation and filing of the impartial analysis and ballot and rebuttal arguments as required by law.
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