At its weekly meeting Tuesday evening, the San Jose City Council voted to put a proposed marijuana business tax on the ballot this November. The tax, which could reach up to 10 percent, would encompass business that sell medical marijuana both legally and illegally in the city.
Reported sales of medical marijuana bring in about $1.5 million annually, which means that the city could take in about $150,000. In contrast, introducing a ballot measure costs $758,000 for the first measure and $366,000 for every additional measure. In other words, it will take at least two years for the city to recoup the cost of the ballot measure under the current circumstances.
On the other hand, officials note that in this November’s election voters will also decide whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use in California. If that ballot measure goes through, the city could earn considerably more revenue from the pot tax.
There are some ironies in the marijuana tax proposal. Councilmember Pete Constant and others argued that including the illegal sale of marijuana in the tax means legitimizing an illegal activity. City Finance Director Scott Johnson countered that it would be more costly for the city to spend time determining which businesses were operating legally and which were not. In other words, people who did not pay the tax would be able to argue that they were selling pot illegally and therefore should not be taxed.
Others argued that the tax would place a financial burden on low-income users of medical marijuana. The city countered by saying that it would review the tax structure for medical and recreational marijuana if marijuana was legalized and make a distinction accordingly.
Read More at CBS 5.
San Jose new Theme song – Up in Budget Smoke
( Cheech & Chong – Up In Smoke –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCZap4o777g )
( Pierluigi )
Up in smoke
That’s where budget money goes
in city pensions, subsidies
and sometimes up my nose
When troubled budget times
Begin to bother me
I take a big toke
and all my budget cares
Go up in smoke
( Chuck )
Up in smoke
Donde todos es mi rey
There are no signs
Que dice no fumer
So I roll un “bomber” budget
Y me doy, un buen toke-ay
Y despues I choke
Y todos mis cares
Go up in smoke
Come on Council let’s get high
( Council – All together )
Up in smoke
That’s where budget gonna be
‘Cause when I’m high
The budget deficit
Don’t bother me
When life begins
To be one long
and confusing budget joke
I take a big toke
and all our budget cares
Go up in smoke
I take a big toke
and all our budget cares
Go up in smoke
A desperate measure for a city out of control. Gosh, the marijuana tax might cover the cost of washing the Gonzo-Dome for a year!
San Jose should focus on more efficient use of the revenue they already have.
New York has 30,000 dedicated police officers. New York can hire this many because the starting salary is 45,000 dollars per year, not 90,000 dollars per year.
Cost of living in New York is the same as the Bay Area.
New York hires dedicated professionals who serve the public and those public servants know how to manage their money.
George,
You are dead wrong is spreading this misinformation. The salary for a New York officer after 6 years is over $90,000 a year. The benefits are also vastly better. This includes 27 days of vacation a year, unlimited sick leave, and the ability to retire after 20 years. That means if you start at 21 you can retire at 41. Get your facts straight at least.
http://www.nypdrecruit.com/NYPD_BenefitsOverview.aspx
A New York City Police Officer can retire after 20 years, but at 50 percent of his pay, not 90 percent.
It takes a New York City Police Officer 6 years to achieve the pay of a San Jose Officer in his year.
Precisely, that is why when San Jose and Mayor Reed reduces the stratospheric pay and benefits for police and firefighters, they will have the option of moving to New York.
Police and firefighters can move to other municipalities if they don’t like what is happening to them in San Jose.
We the taxpayers are no longer going to be held hostage by George Beattie and Randy Sekany.
If police do not like wants going on in San Jose, then feel free to move to greener pastures.
Great try at smoke and mirrors, George. You misstated what you tried to pass off as facts, you get called on it with the actual and verifiable facts, and then instead of being man enough to admit you made a mistake, you try and restate the premise of your argument. Kinda like saying we are in Irag to find weapons of mass destruction, not finding any, then changing the reason we are supposedly there as to build a democracy.
But you have to admit, it was pretty cool to see those fifty firefighters lose their jobs last friday.
Hey George,
News flash….a San Jose police officer can only get 50% of his/her salary after 20 years just like a New York police officer…difference is a San Jose police officer can only retire at 55 years old after 20 years of service, where as a New York police officer can retire at age 40. In other words, a New York police officer can retire a full 15 years earlier for the same 20 years of service. Also, New York PD pays for the full amount of the officers retirement, where San Jose officers now pay almost 20% of their gross salary into their own retirement. New York also pays for 100% of the employee medical and they get unlimited sick leave, as well as tons more vacation days. Also, a San Jose police officer in their first year does not pay $90k a year as you wrongly stated, but $75k. Subtract out the almost 20% taken for retirement and their share of the medical insurance and it is substantially lower than that, not that much different than that of a starting New York police officer whose department pays 100% of retirement and medical benefits, not to mention the additional time off.
wow george. the above statement sums you and yours up in one short sentence.
that was the most hateful thing to say. to say and obviously believe something like that in this day and age of such uncertainty and struggles was just plain mean.
but then again, some presented with FACTS denouncing statements you’ve actually put in print as gospel, retort with yet again more nonsense. well, lesser men anyway.
if you have children george, is that a statement you would like to hear them say? actually enjoying the fact that fifty people lost their job?
yeah and i like pie and smoking bud
According the the web site, the NYPD officer won’t match the academy salary of SJ until 5.5 years into the job.
Be honest, you know this and are just playing the PR war to counter the public pressure right now to look at how we’ve been doing business with public safety salaries and pensions.
No Blair, I am just using the facts provided by the NYPD website. Perhaps it takes a few years for the salaries to be comparable, but factor in other things that NYPD pays for the officer, versus how much a SJPD officers pays of their own money, the vast amount of paid time off for NYPD officers, and the fact they can retire 15 years earlier than a SJPD officer, and this all more than makes up for the few years they don’t make as much in salary at the start of their career. Please don’t put words in my mouth that I am playing the PR war. If we want to have an honest discussion about this then we need to deal with facts and not hyperbole. Mr. Berlin was playing the PR war by asserting falsehoods aas facts. His retort to this was the rather strange assertion that “But you have to admit, it was pretty cool to see those fifty firefighters lose their jobs last friday.”
In other words, people who did not pay the tax would be able to argue that they were selling pot illegally and therefore should not be taxed.
Wasn’t Al Capone finally caught for not paying tax on his illegal alcohol sales?
The San Jose City Council doesn’t have the authority to pass an ordinance that you can be sent to prison for violating, however.
Now that the city council has spent hundreds of hours figuring how to tax marijuana and bringing in 150k more annually, it needs to spend hundreds of hours making San Jose more business and consumer friendly rather than the current situation that chases out big business and forces consumers into other cities. Perhaps this is a good time for Pierluigi to drop his idea of an extra tax on disposable diapers as he brought up a few months ago. It is these idiotic ideas that chase tax revenues into other cities.
Yeah, an excise tax on disposable diapers that is only payable in San Jose is going to lead to people with infants (who buy a lot of those things) shopping in Santa Clara, Campbell, Milpitas, etc…where they will be buying a lot of other groceries & stuff while they’re picking up their diapers. Not a smart proposal (although groceries are sales tax free, for the most part).
Having had kids, along with the diapers you buy lots of other associated non food items at the same time which are taxable.
Armando and Victor to marry and open pot dispensary selling Turkish Brown for baldness. They have a client,actually two since Lu has that piece made in Thailand.
> Yeah, an excise tax on disposable diapers that is only payable in San Jose is going to lead to people with infants (who buy a lot of those things) shopping in Santa Clara, Campbell, Milpitas, etc…where they will be buying a lot of other groceries & stuff while they’re picking up their diapers.
And, exactly the same thing will happen with marijuana, be it medicinal, therapeutic, recreational, nutritional, or whatever.
If it’s taxed in San Jose, potheads will buy their supply, untaxed, in Mendocino County, or hell, directly from the Mexican marijuana farmers in the Mt. Umunhum “open space preserve” (i.e., the South Bay marijuana reservation).
The Marijuana Tax is pure sham. It’s NOT about raising tax revenues; it’s about providing a phony figleaf of legality and “public benefit” for “Big Marijuana”, and make it easier for them to move their money around and avoid “money laundering” hassles.
I’m sure that big wads of pot money are swelling the campaign accounts of any group or interest who supports the Marijuana Tax initiative.
But the money spent on marijuana ultimately feeds the drug wars and oppression in Mexico and puts otherwise harmless Americans into the dreadful, hopeless, dead-end, tax-sucking government “drug treatment” programs.
10% tax isn’t enough of a margin to get people to buy in large bulk and/or make trips to pot country to stock up.
Pot, alcohol, gambling…along with porn, crank, coke and other vices are money makers, even in a recession. Large margins, low overhead. Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol…and it continues to wreck lives…but I think America is better to error on the side of freedom and letting people make their own mistakes.
American prosperity has led to the extending of adolescence from the usual 13-18 range to more like 29, with many people taking baby steps towards adulthood while attending community colleges and doing other things. Maybe its a good thing, maybe not…but this is the world we live in and most of the “moral laws” are about protecting people who we feel are incompetent to manage for themselves.
So fasten your seat belts, put on your bike helmet, turn off your cell phone, and get ready for the next ride leaving November 2nd….
> Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol…and it continues to wreck lives…but I think America is better to error on the side of freedom and letting people make their own mistakes.
Nice in theory, but . . . . not reality.
If I were emperor—and I should be—I might very well legalize all dangerous and addictive drugs, and tax them appropriately to support a comfortable imperial lifestyle.
But, by imperial decree, I would renounce all civic obligation for drug users and prohibit ALL tax funded drug treatment or rehabilition expenditures.
If your filthy drug habit ruins your life, your family’s lives, and results in you’re lying in the gutter covered in feces—well, too bad.
Morally upright citizens would be expected to walk by, shake their heads in disgust, and lecture you about your laziness, your poor judgement, and your bad example.
But the fact of the matter is, we do NOT live in a libertian society where people are expected to accept responsibility for their own actions. We live in a welfare state where the Ruling Class promises that every skinned knee and every instance of moral failing on the part of citizens will be salved by generous applications of taxpayer dollars and “social programs.”
No one is responsible for anything, and the government will make it better.
The potheads always like to argue that “pot is not addictive like alchohol” and therefore it is without consequeces.
Simply not true. Pot is addictive for SOME people, and so SOME people will end up lying in the gutter covered with feces and the tax payers will pay for getting them out of the gutter, hosing them down, feeding and housing them because they have no work ethic and no social utility beyond smoking pot.
No thank you.
A lousy 150K in Marijuana Tax revenue isn’t going begin to pay for the hundreds or thousands of glassy eyed toquers stumbling into the free medical clinics because they got a case of the munchies.
I like that its on the ballot. It wasn’t required as the same majority that voted to put the ordinance on the ballot as a referendum could have enacted it, but its nice to get people involved in making laws.
Despite all the cynicism about low participation and people not studying the issues, research has shown that those who do vote tend to really study the issues and make careful and informed decisions.
When the measure passes, it’ll be clear that this activity can occur in SJ legally (and even generate some revenue. Letting people have a sense of “ownership” over making city rules is priceless and well worth the cost. We should actually have more referendums (every two years) and let people have more power over things large and small.
The revenue is kind of small, but just like the card rooms, every little bit helps and it’ll bring in a whole new group of political campaign contributors.
150k per year? That’s it? Waste of time.
Instead, slap giant taxes on curly lightbulbs, solar panels, and Priuses (what’s the plural for Prius? Prii?), and anything purchased at Whole Foods.
We know that the elitist consumers of those products don’t care about cost and would willingly pay the extra to feed their saving-the-planet narcosis.
>Instead, slap giant taxes on curly lightbulbs, solar panels, and Priuses (what’s the plural for Prius? Prii?), and anything purchased at Whole Foods.
Novice:
You’re a renaissance man! That’s what I call “thinking outside the box”
I don’t mean to quibble, but if it were my call, I would exempt all junk food purchased at Whole Foods from your otherwise justified giant elitest taxes.
Otherwise, since Our Historic First Black President seems to be sensitive to the price of arugula at Whole Foods, I would put an additional arugula excise tax on top of your giant elitist tax.
“Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.”
Good one with the arugula reference!
Here’s a classic of our ruler Barak “Let them eat arugula” Obama out golfing whilst the country burns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9m3GyDh6M8
Had a great time listening to Brian Sussman on KSFO ripping on Pierluigi and the rest of our city council for putting the marijuana issue on the ballot when they don’t even have the legalities of any of this figured out. What a bunch of buffoons we have running the city. After watching Pier on the streaming version of the city council meeting this week, this is a guy who takes himself way too seriously and thinks himself to be much more important than anybody else in the room could be.