As the city protects its revenue stream amid coming budget shortages, there could be a discussion about sharing the revenue from the city’s tax on motel rooms, officially known as the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT).
The city of Ceres has charged a tax on hotel rooms since 1964 but voters approved Measure E in 2015 to double the percentage from five to 10 percent. Because the city did not specifying a certain use for the new tax and they would go into the general fund, the measure needed a simple majority vote to pass.
Later a Transient & Occupancy Tax Citizens’ Advisory Committee was formed and it recommended that some of the money be used to promote events or groups that draw visitors to Ceres and thus boost trade with Ceres businesses.
The tax has generated over $250,000 annually and that will likely increase due to Woodspring Inn & Suites opening.
In 2019 the city gave $40,000 worth of TOT monies on Community Activities Grants to fund programs or groups that generate visits to Ceres and this spur the local economy. Those groups included Ceres Youth Soccer, Ceres Earthquakes, Whitmore Mansion Foundation, Ceres Street Faire Committee, Diamond Bar Arena, Junior Golf Association and Ceres Chamber of Commerce.
From what I gather, that practice stopped and the city now keeps all the revenue for General Fund expenditures. Some on the council want the matter revisited. City Manager Doug Dunford said some are suggesting diverting 10 to 20 percent of TOT revenue to non-profits. While that’s good for non-profits, it would hurt the financially strapped city.
More discussion will be at a forthcoming council meeting.
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I sense the city’s worries when it comes to preparing for next year’s budget. As we reported, the current budget was balanced by dipping into reserves by $2 million and next year that won’t be an option.
Councilwoman Rosalinda Vierra has now asked for a City Council agenda item to discuss the rising costs of the city attorney.
City Manager Doug Dunford is also concerned about the attorney costs, saying all departments have been cut but hers. Legal expenses are approaching $400,000 for the current fiscal year!
Vierra said Ceres’ costs are exceeding what surrounding cities are paying for an attorney on staff.
Lots more of this is coming.
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Leave it to Sacramento Democrats to pass yet another bill to control how we live our lives.
There is a new bill, Senate Bill 442 authored by Los Angeles Democrat Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas that would require stores to have at least one dedicated worker there to help self-service customers. Stores also will be required to operate at least one traditional staffed checkout lane at all times and restrict the type and number of items a customer can bring through self-checkout.”
So let’s see what got us in this kiosk business. The state’s ever increasing push for businesses to pay more and more for wages caused stores to cut jobs and began offering self-checkout lanes. Now the Democrats realize, whoops, their mandates have caused a loss of jobs so now they’re forcing stores to hire more folks. It’s all about control and catering to labor unions which slip all that money into their campaign accounts.
Most stores I see with self-checkout lanes – such as Save Mart and Target – already have an employee watching over the stations simply for reasons of helping customers and curbing theft.
It’s not surprising that Smallwood-Cuevas, a former labor organizer herself, is authoring SB 442. She has received nearly $30,000 from the California Labor Federation and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union since 2021. Her bill is payback.
What are the new restrictions? She wants to limit your self-checkout experience to 15 items or less. That’s ridiculous because self-checkout lanes and express lanes are different things!
Also, you won’t be able to self-checkout any item that an employee had to unlock from a locked cabinet – something we see a lot these days in California because of the proliferation of shoplifting that occurred after Democrats pushed for Prop. 47 in 2014 and duped voters into believing it would be wise to let people steal up to $950 and let it be a misdemeanor.
These legislators go to Sacramento and “justify” their existence by passing more and more restrictions. I suppose people enjoy being controlled because they keep electing the controllers.
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How do you all feel about the state taxing you for every mile you drive? That’s what Gavin boy wants for you to offset the gas tax which EV owners aren’t paying yet tear up the roads the same way as our gasoline engine cars do.
The average car is driven 15,000 miles per year – easily $600 per year at six cents per mile!
No, the politicians wouldn’t be so politically suicidal to charge a Vehicle Mileage Tax (VMT) to you directly so what did they do? According to Republican Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, the Democrats snuck in a VMT into the budget bill which will be added to the already high cost of housing in California.
They just don’t learn, do they?
Houses don’t drive on roads, yet in the mindset of the tax-and-spend progressives, the people buying new homes drive and so let’s secretly throw the new tax into the mortgage payments on new housing through AB 930.
“Do you understand how dishonest, sneaky corrupt these politicians are?” DeMaio said on his YouTube channel last week. “They don’t want you to know they’re robbing you blind.”
The Coalition for Affordable, Reliable, and Equitable (CARE) Housing warns that the tax will drive up housing costs, destroy jobs, and worsen the state’s affordability crisis. The coalition said the tax could reach $324,000 per home or apartment – “a crushing burden that translates into the equivalent of a $2 penalty for every extra mile driven over government-set driving limits.”
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That leads me to the issue of Newsom bragging about reforming CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act which has been used to stifle new construction and caused our massive housing shortage.
While AB 130 exempts housing projects from environmental review, it also imposes minimum-wage requirements and prevailing wage rates on developments that were never subject to these costly mandates in the first place. More than 87% of the state’s private construction workforce is nonunion!
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Rep. Tom McClintock, a Republican whose district includes Hughson and parts of Stanislaus County, has angered some of his supporters.
Last week McClintock was one of four GOP congressmen who voted not to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and strip her of all House committee assignments for her vile comments mocking the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Conservative talk show host Mark Levin said McClintock and the three others who saved Omar from censure “need to be primaried and defeated.”
The fact that we have an elected official who speaks with so much hostility and contempt for millions in mourning is a sign of a debased society willing to tolerate such vileness by electing her.
Omar mocked those mourning Kirk, claiming people who say “Charlie Kirk just wanted to have a civil debate” are “full of s - - -.” She added, “There is nothing more f - - - ed up than to completely pretend that his words and actions have not been recorded and in existence for the last decade or so.” Omar dismissed the grief of Kirk fans and support, saying, “don’t be fooled, these people don’t give a single s- - - about Charlie Kirk. They are just using his death to further their Christo-fascist agenda. Charlie Kirk was a reprehensible human being. He enacted his political agenda by preying on weak-minded people.” She also shared a social media post saying Kirk “was Dr. Frankenstein and his monster shot him through the neck.”
McClintock doesn’t like censuring members for speech, but called her comments “vile and contemptible” and “deserve the harshest criticism of every man and woman of good will.” McClintock said a “free society depends on tolerating ALL speech — even hateful speech.”
Okay, but what would have been the harm in slipping Omar on the hand since her remarks demean and dignity of the House of Representatives?
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The fact that Prop. 50 appears to be gaining support shows you that the tactics of lying politicians like Newsom work. The people who support 50 must be gullible to the millions of dollars on TV commercials. It also shows that if you tie any issue to Trump that you can get anyone infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome to fall for your swill.
If you vote for Prop. 50 this Nov. 4, you are undoing what California voters voted for in 2010, which was take district boundary drawing out of the hands of politicians and let an independent Citizens Redistricting Commission do the work. If you vote for 50, you want politicians to draw districts so it benefits them. But if you’re a far leftist you are all in favor of Democrats running the entire show and trying to annihilate the Republican Party, which is already significantly underrepresented in the state Legislature.
Just remember that Prop. 50 is an invention of Newsom and his special election to rig elections is costing us $250 million.
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Yes, Gov. Newsom, we do have freedom of speech in our country. But there are consequences if you are a late night talk show host broadcasting to millions in an audience and say something really crass and foolish about a man’s murder.
Newsom took to social media to defend Jimmy Kimmel who went too far and said abhorrent things about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Newsom wrote on X: “Buying and controlling media platforms. Firing commentators. Cancelling shows. These aren’t coincidences. It’s coordinated. And it’s dangerous. The GOP does not believe in free speech. They are censoring you in real time.”
Hardly a comic and more a political operative, Kirk’s show was suspended after Kimmel said: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half-staff, which got some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.” Kimmel then went on to make fun of Trump’s grief over the loss of Kirk, saying: “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
ABC and Disney canned Kimmel because he’s alienated too many audience members with his hateful comments.
But aside from his horrible insensitivities, Kimmel was outright lying about the assassin’s motives claiming the shooter was a MAGA member. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Kimmel “was appearing to directly mislead the American public about a significant fact that probably one of the most significant political events we’ve had in a long time.”
Assassin Tyler Robinson may have been raised in a religious and conservative household but he strayed far from the values and was NOT part of MAGA. He was indoctrinated by the Left. He expressed his hatred of Kirk and wanted him dead because he spoke against transgenderism. Of course we later learned Robinson was romantically involved with Lance Twiggs, a male fooling himself that he’s a woman. Despite calling Kirk hateful, Robinson committed the biggest act of hatred in humanity – killing an innocent man, a father and husband and traumatizing the 2,000 persons who watched his death.
Relatives of Twiggs say has mental issues, using drugs and alcohol, and was addicted to gaming – maybe the reasons why he’s confused about his gender.
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer said this of the Kimmel show suspension: “Trump and his allies seem to want to shut down speech that they don’t like to hear. That is not what democracies do; that’s what autocracies do and it doesn’t matter whether you agree with Kimmel or not, he has the right to free speech.”
Schumer would be right if it were not for the fact that Kimmel said his remarks on a platform for which his employer did not appreciate and offending half the country. Kimmel simply pushed the bounds of propriety.
Keep in mind Schumer had pressed for Tucker Carlson to be fired from Fox because he exposed falsehoods about Jan. 6!
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The vilest public response to the Kirk shooting may be found in the classroom where some educators were happy about the Kirk shooting. And these folks are teaching our young people!
Joe Sedlak, a special education teacher of children with autism at Rogich Middle School in Las Vegas, posted: “I have watched the (assassination) video over and over like 50 times by now. And not the far away video, the close-up video. Love every fraction of a second of it and it gets better with every watch.” He also posted: “If they were aiming for his head, they were a terrible shot. Like that thing was huge, how do you miss?”
Garrett Berry posted on social media that he reported Sedlak to school administration two years ago for “having Karl Marx and Che Guevara quotes in his email signature.”
This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation. How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com
