{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"KZYX News","title":"Fort Bragg City Council decides against sales tax for workforce housing","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":389,"description":"August 11, 2022 — The Fort Bragg City Council had second thoughts this week about its own plans for a sales tax that would have been used to fund workforce housing.\r\nThe proposal for a ⅜ cent sales tax would have been a general tax, needing only a simple majority to pass and going into the city’s general fund. An oversight committee was going to make sure the estimated $650,000 to $800,000 a year was used for the stated purpose, but that’s not guaranteed with general taxes, as former interim city manager David Spaur, who now works as a consultant for the city, explained.\r\n\r\n“Having the funds go into the general fund, and then earmarking or designating them towards your specific purpose, allows you to build that account for your specific purpose, but in the event of an emergency, if the Council needed the funds for police, or for fire, or for flood or famine, those funds would be available to you,” he said. “But the oversight committee would want you to possibly replace those funds and backfill them at a later date, or find alternative sources of revenue to replace those funds.”\r\n\r\nCouncil member Tess Albin Smith asked Spaur what the city could do with less than a million dollars a year. She said $800,000 “does not seem like enough to do anything with workforce housing. So I’m wondering, are we just going to save it up until we get enough? What would we do with $800,000? What’s the plan?”\r\n\r\nSpaur replied that the money “will allow you to leverage your housing community development funds for $800,000 into $1.6 million. So with a 50% match, you can double it. You can accrue those funds over several years. You can use those funds to purchase property, or a down payment on property, and then use grant funds and others to close on that property. So it’s a good start. It’s a good bite at the apple. Obviously, you’re going to need a couple bites at the apple. You’ve got a housing crisis going on, and you need to find revenue sources specifically for workforce housing,...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/xZpAumwbhFUpJUYcwaQ1-q6snzOyqAm13l7cW6AWPCM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mMzkz/NjAwNjc2OWMyZmFk/YWY2YTdmYjI5M2Mz/YWMxNy5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}