Voters in Lompoc will decide whether to hike the sales tax by one-half percent for road repairs and maintenance.
On Tuesday night, the City Council voted 4-1 to move the proposal to the June 2 ballot, with Jeremy Ball as the lone dissenter. The item needed approval from four of the five members.
The council had discussed the topic at previous meetings before this week.
“This is the very last step to putting the special sales tax on the ballot for the June 2026 election,” City Attorney Jeff Malawy said.
If approved, the measure would boost the transaction and use tax by one-half cent, or 0.5%, changing the rate from the current 8.75% to 9.25%.
A special tax directs how the money must be spent, and the item requires two-thirds voter approval, or 66.7%, to pass.
Mayor Jim Mosby has advocated for a special tax measure to direct funding the road repairs.
“If we don’t fix the asphalt out here, you’re in trouble,” Mosby said.
By choosing the special tax, the council bypassed the general tax option that would put funds in city coffers without restrictions for how the money should be spent. A general tax would need voter approval from more than 50% of voters.
Ball lobbied strongly for a general tax measure, saving he opposed pursuing a special tax.
“I don’t like the approach. I don’t like hamstringing the future of our city’s flexibility to take on new challenges that we don’t even know that’s going to hit us in the face,” Ball said.
The mayor sought to restrain how the funds get spent in the future.
“I wouldn’t trust another general fund tax,” Mosby said. “Personally, myself, I would not. The disciple of the future councils is not there, hasn’t been there for 20 years.”
Council members also chose the phrasing for the ballot measure question to appear on the ballot.
Specifically, the June 2 ballot item will ask: “Shall the measure, known as the LOMPOC STREET REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE MEASURE, with all funds legally restricted to be used exclusively to maintain, repair, and rehabilitate existing Lompoc city streets, roads, alleys, and related existing infrastructure, establishing an additional 0.5% sales tax, expiring after 15 years, subject to annual audit and public accountability requirements, and raising approximately $3.75 million annually, be adopted?”
They also agreed to ban rebuttal arguments, and appointed the mayor and Councilman Victor Vega to craft the ballot argument in supporting the measure.
In the coming weeks, county Elections Division staff will assign a letter from the alphabet to serve as the name for the Lompoc measure.
On Tuesday, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors heard a proposal for a ballot measure to increase the sales tax in unincorporated parts of the county by 1%. In the end, the board took no action on the matter.