by Bob Walsh
Moraga is a small incorporated town in Contra Costa County, CA. It is less than ten square miles and less than 18,000 population. It is a upper-middle class bedroom community. There is typically only a handful of people that bother to show up at board meetings because pretty much nothing interesting ever happens. A regular is Seth Freeman, who is often critical of the town board.
On June 14 Freeman was the ONLY resident at the board meeting. The board approved a six percent pay hike for the 36 town employees. Half of them make at least $100,000 a year. Salary represents over 60% of the town budget. Nearby Orinda, about the same size, spends about 14% of its budget on personnel. They also talked about appointing a poet laureate for the town, and discussed spending a fair chunk of change on a city park.
Two weeks later the town declares a fiscal emergency..
Admittedly they had problems recently. One sink hole in the city sunk $5 million from the city bank account.
The fiscal emergency declaration will allow the city to put a special tax proposal up to the voters. Unfortunately for Moraga it does not have nearly the sales tax income as do other similar cities and Proposition 13 severely limits their property tax income. Some city residents at openly asserting that the city should tighten their own fiscal belt before asking residents to cough up more property tax revenue.
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