City Council members voiced support of a possible sales tax increase that could bring as much as $13.5 million to city coffers, but won’t act on it until after this year’s city budget is finalized. They mayor said he opposes the proposal, and his campaign manager called it "regressive." The tax increase was recommended by Parks and Recreation Commission Chairman and mayoral candidate Jonathan Rewers in response to the results of a poll commissioned by the city that showed 71 percent of city voters would favor a sales tax increase to support city services, especially if the money is used to offset cuts to city police, fire and youth services. “Despite what I think, a sales taxes seems to

The chairman of the city Parks and Recreation Commission is calling for a quarter-percent increase in sales tax to help fill the gap in the Department of Parks and Recreation budget – a move he says is supported by voters and would increase the city’s annual revenue by $13.5 million. The money would go into the general fund, which currently faces a $15.7 million shortfall, and is the primary funding source for police, fire and parks services. “We are at the point with parks where there is no more money, no more efficiencies to be had, and no crews left,” Parks and Recreation Commission Chairman and mayoral candidate Jonathan Rewers said Tuesday. “We are left to look at raising revenue.”

Water and sewer rate increases will go into effect for Sacramento residents July 1, but before they do, the City Council will consider a plan to help low-income families pay steadily rising utility bills. Department of Utilities staff will outline details of a subsidy program Tuesday that would reduce monthly utility bill increases by almost 90 percent for more than 16,000 low-income families in the city. The projected water rate increase for a single-family home is $3.44 per month, and the proposed subsidy would credit a qualifying low-income household $3. For wastewater rates, the increase is projected to be $2.36, and the subsidy would be $2. According to the staff report, revenue ge

The candidates in the race for mayor didn’t pull any punches at a candidate forum Saturday at the County Administration Building, despite Mayor Kevin Johnson’s notable absence. Leonard Padilla, Jonathan Rewers and write-in candidate Edgar Hilbert-Garcia took the stage Saturday to answer questions from a panel of political media experts, including Foon Rhee and Pia Lopez from The Sacramento Bee, and Cosmo Garvin from the Sacramento News & Review. Johnson’s campaign manager told media in numerous interviews leading up to the forum that Johnson would not attend because the mayor faces “no viable candidates” in the race. Padilla dismissed the comment as “ridiculous,” while Rewers suggested

The candidates from all of the City Council district races, the mayoral race and two Board of Supervisors races will face off Saturday at a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters. One notable exception: Mayor Kevin Johnson is not scheduled to appear. According to Johnson’s campaign manager, Steve Maviglio, Johnson has “no need” to attend. “Given the large number of events the mayor has attended over the past year, and since none of his opponents are waging a real campaign against him, he chose not to participate in this event,” Maviglio said Friday. The news of Johnson’s planned absence came as no surprise to mayoral candidate Jonathan Rewers. “He’s not even campaigning,” Rewers s

Sports fans and arena enthusiasts will have to wait a little longer for word on any “plan B’ for an entertainment and sports complex in the railyards – at least until the new city budget is resolved. “I was shooting for sometime in May, but it’s going to take a little longer,” Mayor Kevin Johnson told the media Tuesday. The city spent nearly $690,000 in the past year on consultants and research in preparation for building a new arena in the downtown railyards. When negotiations with the Maloof family, the Kings’ owners, collapsed, Johnson quickly set off in search of a viable ‘plan B’ – with or without the Maloofs. Johnson continues to meet with Tim Lieweke, president of Anschutz Enter

When Brittany Willeford and more than 30 others appeared at City Hall last week to protest budget cuts to programs for disabled teens, they got the attention of Mayor Kevin Johnson and council members who hope the programs can be saved. “We have to find a way and be creative,” Johnson said at a press conference Tuesday. “If there’s a way we can resurrect it, that’d be awesome for everybody.” At stake are recreation and social programs that serve approximately 3,000 disabled teens and young adults each year through Access Leisure. The current program budget is $146,000, and that’s being cut from the 2012-13 budget, Program Director Annie Desalerno said Wednesday. “I didn’t know a whole l

If you could ask the candidates for City Council anything – what would you want to know? The race for City Council District 4 immediately caught fire when incumbent Rob Fong announced he wasn’t running for re-election, and now seven candidates are vying for the seat. Some of the questions the candidates will likely face include, who gets dibs on neighborhood parking – businesses or residents? Where should much-needed bridges go – at Broadway, or Richards Boulevard? And what about The Claw? Can our tree-lined streets survive only three months of city pickup service? In the mayoral race, three challengers stepped up to face incumbent Kevin Johnson, and all four will likely hear questions

Mayor Kevin Johnson and City Councilwoman Bonnie Pannell haven’t always seen eye to eye – one of the factors in his decision to support opponent Betty Williams in the race for Pannell’s District 8 council seat. “I want to work with people who are open to a vision and an agenda to move the city forward,” Johnson said at his weekly press conference Tuesday. “If somebody has an agenda that is clearly just to vote in a different way, or if the mayor comes up with an idea and people are just going to automatically say ‘no,’ I don’t feel that’s in the best interests of the city.” Johnson – who said he supports Williams because of her history of community activism – and Pannell have been on opp

With the introduction of the city budget to the City Council Tuesday, the specter of layoffs and the city’s negotiations with unions over pension plans will take center stage for the next few months – but some important fiscal nuggets could get overlooked. For example, of the 286 city employees expected to be laid off with the proposed budget, 11 of those are in the Community Development Department – which is responsible for building permits and inspections, code compliance, and long-range planning for development projects. Additional layoffs are slated for the Public Works department (which includes transportation and parking services) and the Parks and Recreation department. What will

After two days of intense private negotiations, Mayor Kevin Johnson announced Friday that there will be no deal between the city and the Maloofs for a new arena. Citing irreconcilable differences, Johnson said all negotiations with the Sacramento Kings team owners are over and no further discussions are planned. Kings spokesman Eric Rose confirmed in an email statement Friday that they could not reach an agreement with the city. “We know this door is closed,” Johnson said at a press conference Friday, “but, as mayor, I’m going to do all I can to keep an NBA team in town.” Here is how the story unfolded Friday morning in the Twittersphere: <[ View the story "Twitter feed from mayor's

It’s that time of year again when protesters line up outside City Hall, public comment gets intense – and sometimes colorful – and council meetings drag on into the night: City Hall released the 2012-13 city budget Thursday. The proposed budget includes the elimination of nearly 286 city positions and – unlike last year – does not include use of the general fund “economic uncertainty” reserves, according to a city press release Thursday. “This is not the budget I had hoped to recommend to address next year’s structural budget deficit,” City Manager John Shirey said in the release. The City Council will begin to address the budget in public hearings May 1. “Our big focus now is the budg

Local officials are currently in the nation’s capital to lobby for federal support – and funding – for regional projects, pushing the City Council meeting to Thursday. “For me, it’s all about our levees,” City Councilwoman Angelique Ashby said. “I’m doing all I can to keep the conversation going (about funding) here in Washington.” Ashby represents an area of the city where levee work is needed to improve flood control, but projects have stalled due to lack of federal funding. City Council members Jay Schenirer, Steve Cohn, Bonnie Pannell and Ashby and City Manager John Shirey left Sacramento Friday with the Cap-to-Cap program, organized by the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce. Whi

Edgar Garcia has decided – again – to join the race for mayor, but this time he will campaign as a write-in candidate. Garcia, a tax preparer in Oak Park, returned to the city clerk’s office Wednesday morning to complete paperwork for a write-in candidacy for mayor in the June 5 primary election. He originally jumped into the race in November, but the momentum was short-lived: Just six weeks later, reports were surfacing in the media that he was dropping out of the race. When the March 9 filing deadline passed, the city clerk’s office reported that Garcia had in fact submitted all of the required paperwork to remain in the race, but his candidate petition fell short of the required 20 v

Mayor Kevin Johnson said another meeting with the Maloofs is in the works, but stopped short of promising that the arena deal will be revived – or that a new deal will be struck. “Sitting down doesn’t do anybody any harm – but it won’t be dragged out,” Johnson said. “I don’t want anyone to have false hope.” Johnson told media Tuesday at his weekly press conference that the city’s position on the arena deal remains the same, but the city will still explore all options. “In terms of plan B, we continue to do our internal analysis,” Johnson said. “Our goal is to report back (to the City Council) on May 8.” The sticking point in negotiations between the city and the Maloofs is the revenue

There may no longer be an arena deal, but Mayor Kevin Johnson said he isn’t giving up on an entertainment and sports complex for Sacramento – not until the city has considered all options, including building an arena without an anchor tenant. “This is not over, in my opinion,” Johnson said Tuesday at his weekly press conference. “It doesn’t do us any good to continue to point fingers and blame. We don’t have the deal we thought we had, so we need to figure out what plan B looks like.” Options to be considered, Johnson said, may include scaling back the original project to cut costs or to build the facility in stages, adding features over time. Building a venue without an anchor tenant i

Despite the battle between the city and Sacramento Kings’ team owners over a new entertainment and sports complex, City Councilman Steve Cohn is adamant that plans for developing the railyards site for an intermodal transit facility will continue uninterrupted. “Yes, there is absolutely an intermodal without the arena,” Cohn said Thursday at a workshop on the project at City Hall. More than 100 people attended the workshop hosted by the city to discuss the site orientation of the proposed arena at the downtown railyards along with current and future transportation facilities at the site. Until the recent arena deal fell apart, the intermodal project at the downtown railyards was slated

City officials had the last word of the day Friday on the failed arena deal between the city and the owners of the Sacramento Kings – and that word was “disappointed.” “We are profoundly disappointed that the entertainment and sports complex project is not moving forward,” City Manager John Shirey said Friday. “We had great hopes, and there was great jubilation just a few weeks ago that a deal had been struck.” Assistant City Manager John Dangberg and City Councilmen Rob Fong and Steve Cohn joined Shirey for an impromptu press conference Friday in response to the sudden failure of a deal between the city, the Maloofs, arena operator AEG and the NBA to build a new arena in Sacramento. “T

Mayor Kevin Johnson admitted defeat Friday as the deal to build a new arena and keep the Kings in Sacramento failed despite the “blood, sweat, tears and effort” that Johnson said went into it. “Is the deal as we know it dead? Absolutely,” Johnson said. In what turned out to be the third major press conference in New York Friday regarding the arena deal, Johnson told media that he is baffled by the Kings owners, the Maloofs, and he doesn’t understand how things fell to this point. “We felt we had an agreement (in Orlando), they didn’t feel that we did. That’s a pretty fundamental difference,” Johnson said. “It became very clear by their actions today that they didn’t want to make a deal.

After a year of negotiations, economic reports and financial cartwheels by city officials and Sacramento Kings owners, NBA Commissioner David Stern said it appears the deal for a new Sacramento arena is dead. “I am extremely disappointed on behalf of both the Maloofs and the city of Sacramento,” Stern said at a New York press conference Friday, “but I think there is nothing further to be done.” Stern said the NBA Board of Governors met Thursday with the Sacramento Kings team owners, the Maloofs, and – after hearing a “detailed and thorough” presentation – Stern said the board came to some simple conclusions. “(In Orlando) we had an agreement in principle – a framework, a handshake deal