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So versatile it can even pay for cops.

So versatile it can even pay for cops.

With local unemployment at 13.5 percent, it doesn’t take a scientific poll to tell most people that raising city taxes might be a tough sell. But Santa Cruz city leaders are not most people.

At the city’s behest, local pollster Gene Bregman is conducting a telephone survey that gauges residents’ receptiveness to raising sales taxes or utility taxes or adding new taxes on cell phones and Internet-based calls in order to support city services.

“We’re looking for what kinds of things people are willing to pay for with taxes,” says Santa Cruz Mayor Mike Rotkin. “We have a structural problem with our budget. The revenues the city brings in cannot keep up with the services we provide. The options, therefore, are finding new revenue, cutting the pay and benefits of city employees or cutting services. The same residents that complain about taxes are the ones that come to us demanding that we do something for them. There’s no free lunch.”

The current economic downturn, which Rotkin calls a “depression, not a recession,” has already led to widespread layoffs and a 10 percent cut in city employee salaries last year. Santa Cruz Assistant City Manager Martin Bernal says polls are routinely used to avoid mounting costly campaigns that are doomed to fail.

“The city has to ask itself what kind of services they want,” says Bernal. “It’s a tough time in our community, but the council still hears every day from residents who want to see improvements.”

A tax on cellular and Internet-based (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone lines like those operated through Vonage and Skype may have the most potential for passing, Rotkin says. That’s despite the 2008 failure of Measure T, a $3.49-per-month tax on cell phone lines to support 911 emergency services, which was shot down by voters 51 to 49 percent. Currently, few municipalities have tax structures in place that apply to cell phones and other non-traditional phone lines, though they’re beginning to catch up. Los Angeles and Pomona passed similar measures in the last two years, and Rotkin thinks the city is ready to take another whack at passing it—but with a few tweaks.

“We were caught flat-footed with Measure T. We didn’t realize how many phone lines people have,” he says. “A per-household tax might work better.”

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