Arcata wants to raise the sales tax by 3/4 percent — to 9.25%.

Skip directly to the survey.  See also the video of the survey results presentation and Council discussion. 38 minutes.

At the City Council’s February 7, 2024, meeting a contract “for public opinion research on potential tax measure(s)” with the public opinion polling firm FM3 Research was on the consent calendar for approval, and was approved by a 5-0 vote. The desire for this survey was discussed at the December 6, 2023, meeting. The contracted firm, FM3, shows in its Scope of Services: “Consultant shall conduct opinion research for the City on a potential finance measure.” 

The survey was conducted from March 7 to March 18, 2024. A total of 567 people entered their preferences and leanings on 25 questions, many with multiple sections. Randomly-chosen participants were selected from registered voter information. Each potential participant was contacted by either telephone, postcard, text, or e-mail with an individualized invitation. Entries to the survey were made either on-line or via a phone call. 

I happened to be one of the randomly-selected residents of Arcata selected to enter my opinions on this survey.

The results of the survey are below. A presentation by Miranda Everitt of the FM3 firm took place via Zoom at the City Council’s special meeting on Tuesday, April 2, 2024 — the Council’s annual goal-setting study session meeting. This meeting was not televised, available on-line, or video-recorded. There is no audio or video record of this meeting. [Correction:  There is a rough audio recording, available on Arcata’s website’s meeting calendar page.] A 41-pages slide presentation was included in the agenda packet for that April 2 special meeting. The slides that were shown at the meeting differed slightly in places from the slide pack that’s in the Council’s agenda packet.

After the presentation and discussion, the Council agreed to instruct Staff to continue with developing the draft ballot language to place a sales tax increase of 0.75% (3/4%) on the November, 2024, ballot.

As this was a “special meeting” there is not a Brown Act requirement that there be a time for public comment on an agenda item. There was public comment at the start of the meeting to cover the potential tax measure and the goal-setting session. No one spoke on the details of the survey.

Issues with the survey and the results

I have numerous issues with this survey and report. These issues were expressed to the City Council in two e-mails. In my view, many questions were biased in their wording, and certain results stated as conclusions in the report did not seem to correspond with the actual data from the survey.

There were two questions in the survey that were well outside the scope of “potential tax increases.” One was on an increase of building height from four stories to a maximum of seven stories (area not specified, so could be throughout Arcata), and one was a multi-part question on the types of uses of space in the commercial areas of Arcata: Street parking, Sidewalks, Retail shops, Housing, Bike lanes and trails, Parking lots, Restaurants.

What is a question on 7-story building height doing on a tax-increase survey?

In my view these two questions on building height and land use have no business being there. Or, if they were to be included, there should be more questions (at least four) — and the questions should have been worded more openly, for better results. As they are, the questions are tremendously skewed. If the questions had been presented fairly, the results would have far more value to us.

The survey question on building height was worded as:

Increasing the allowable building height from four stories to a maximum of seven stories to increase the availability of housing affordable to working families while protecting open space. 

Strongly support / Somewhat support / Somewhat oppose / Strongly oppose / Don’t know

This question could be meant to relate to the 7-story building height maximum of the draft Gateway Area Plan, or could mean in general in parts or all of Arcata. It is a terrifically skewed question — who wouldn’t be against provide affordable housing to working families?  There is nothing in the Gateway Area Plan that says that the purpose of these buildings is to provide housing that’s affordable to working families. 

There is more on the bias and absurdity of this question in the article here on Arcata1.com.

Alluding that the increase in building height is “to increase the availability of housing affordable to working families while protecting open space” utilizes warm and fuzzy buzz-words that are clear triggers for a positive response. This is not suitable for a survey that intends to give us real and honest views on the people of Arcata.

As it was, that survey question showed a total support for seven-story buildings of 51% and a total opposed of 47% — within the survey’s stated margin of error of ±4.9%.

If the question had been worded as “to increase the availability of studio and one-bedroom apartments” or “to provide more student housing for Cal Poly Humboldt’s expansion to 12,000 students”… then the survey results would have been very different. While those two examples are presumptive (no one has a crystal ball that tells us what developers will  actually build), I would vote that those examples are more realistic than “to increase the availability of housing affordable to working families.”

False conclusions

Certain conclusions that were falsely derived from the data, in my view. As one example, the results state “Parking, whether in lots or on the street, is a low priority for Arcata’s commercial space.” But only 15% of the respondents said that street parking was not important, and only 25% said that parking lots were not important. That is, 85% responded that street parking is extremely important, very important, or somewhat important, and 75% said that parking lots were extremely important, very important, or somewhat important.

The Survey Results

Below in image format, and here as a PDF that can be viewed, downloaded, printed, and copy-and-pasted from.

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The Survey in a PDF viewer

Two versions: For desktops or larger screens, and for cell-phones or smaller screens.

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