City releases results of sales tax poll and community priorities survey

Poll shows strong support for sales tax hike

As the city council prepares to the deal with the 2024-25 budget, the city is trying to figure out which city services residents care about most and how they feel about a sales tax hike. (Photo by Laura Hagar Rush)

In June and early July, the city of Sebastopol conducted both a Community Priorities Survey and a poll, done by Probolsky Research, about a potential sales tax increase.

The results of these two efforts—the survey and the poll—are now in.

Community Priorities Survey

The community priorities survey was meant to inform council members about which city services residents care most about as the council considers the coming year’s budget—which they’ll do at tonight’s city council meeting.

The survey included nine options regarding city services and administration, and asked participants to ascribe a “High,” “Medium” or “Low” priority to each.

The survey, which ran from June 26 to July 11, received 1,013 responses. The top three issues judged a “High Priority” by respondents included:

• Providing effective public safety, including 911 emergency medical/police/fire response

• Managing city finances

• City response to floods, wildfires, and other natural disasters

Here’s the breakdown of responses:

The survey also included space for additional comments. One third of the survey respondents (395 people) had additional comments. The word cloud below captures the words used most frequently in those comments. It brought to the surface several issues that weren’t mentioned in the original list, especially homelessness, traffic and housing.

Councilmember Sandra Maurer, who’s a data hound, took a look at those additional comments and tried to roughly calculate a list of priorities based on them.

“I think that it’s helpful to read those open responses to get a better understanding of the issues that people care about,” Maurer said.

She broke the additional responses down into 20 categories: Homelessness, 62 responses (20.6%); Traffic, 45 (15%); Economic development, 39 (13%); Community Center, 38 responses (12.6%); Government accountability, 27 responses; Housing, 26 responses; Pool, 23 responses; Roads, 22 responses; Police, 22 responses; Library, 22 responses; Budget, 17 responses; Safer Streets, 16 responses; Senior Center, 15 responses; Parks, 15 responses; Other, 14 responses; Fire, 12 responses; Ideas, 12 responses; Art, 10 responses; Youth, 8 responses; Safety, 8 responses.

Maurer said she was particularly struck by the large number of people who mentioned homelessness in their additional comments—an issue that wasn’t even listed in the pre-set topics on the city survey (though it was captured in the word cloud). While a few people wrote asking for the city to find housing for the homeless (2 responses) or at least a place for homeless people to park (2 responses), a much larger number were fed up with homelessness in general, asking the city to:

• Get rid of RVs (16 responses).

• Do not spend any money on homeless (12 responses).

• Keep homeless off our streets/clean up trash (10 responses).

• Get rid of the homeless (3 responses).

Interestingly, there’s a lot of crossover between Maurer’s priority list and the priority list that the Probolsky poll, a scientific survey, came up with. The Probolsky poll was mainly about the sales tax, which we’ll discuss later in this article, but it also included a section on residents’ priorities.

In the poll, the very first question was “In your own words, what do you feel is the most important issue facing Sebastopol today?” Given the freedom to state their own priorities, residents gave answers to the poll that were quite different from the city’s survey, which relied on a list of pre-set choices. Note how the answers below are more reminiscent of the word cloud responses and Maurer’s list.

A question of priorities: What is the most important issue facing Sebastopol today? (Data from the Probolsky poll)

Interestingly, Maurer’s priority list is born out in another Probolsky analysis that compares people’s priorities with their levels of satisfaction about how the city is dealing with that particular issue. The issues that show the greatest variance between priority and satisfaction are “managing city finances,” “responding to homelessness,” “traffic” and “economic development.”

Gap between priority and satisfaction. (From the Probolsky poll results)

The Probolsky poll and the sales tax increase

The Probolsky poll ran from June 27 to July 7. A total of 300 voters were surveyed—33% by phone and 67% online.

The main point of the Probolsky poll was to suss out how people were feeling about a proposed sales tax increase of a half-cent or a quarter-cent. A half-cent increase in the sales tax in Sebastopol would produce $1,500,000 annually for the city, while a quarter-cent increase would produce $750,000 annually.

The two options were described like so:

• HALF-CENT SALES TAX INCREASE: “Sebastopol Public Safety, Roads, City Services Measure: To maintain Sebastopol’s City services such as 911 emergency medical/police/fire response, fire protection, emergency preparedness, maintenance of streets/roads, parks/trails, library, youth and senior services, retaining/attracting local businesses, and for general government use, shall the measure establishing a 1/2 cent sales tax generating approximately $1,500,000 million annually until ended by voters, requiring audits, public spending disclosure, and all funds used locally, be adopted?”

• QUARTER-CENT SALES TAX INCREASE: “What if the sales tax measure was a 1/4 cent sales tax, providing approximately $750,000 annually, which would allow for the City to maintain emergency 911/police/fire/medical response, maintenance of streets/roads, parks, libraries, senior services, emergency preparedness, and for general government use? If the election was held today, would you vote yes or vote no?”

When respondents were first asked about these options, they responded as follows:

• 70.3% of respondents said they would vote yes on a 1/2 cent sales tax increase, while 23.3% said they would vote no.

• 71.7% said they would vote yes on a 1/4 cent sales tax, while 21% said they would vote no.

Half-cent or quarter-cent: How support for the sales tax increase varies by amount. (From the Probolsky poll results)

After respondents were told more about the sales tax measure, they were asked the question again. The numbers barely budged.

Before and after education about the sales tax measure. (From the Probolsky poll results)

The Probolsky poll also asked how well the city was doing at providing services to residents. In that question, 63.7% of voters approve of the job that the city of Sebastopol is doing providing services to residents, while 29.3% disapproved, and 7% were unsure.

This approval rating, while high, was also somewhat lukewarm, with 80.6% of those that approved saying they approved “somewhat” rather than strongly. Disapproval was equally lukewarm, though a larger percentage disagreed strongly.

City approval ratings from the Probolsky poll results.

See the full Probolsky poll results here.