Lawrence Samuels Leads Effort to Preserve Carmel Valley

Libertarian Party of California Northern Vice-Chair Lawrence Samuels is running for the proposed city council of Carmel Valley in order to defeat the incorporation of the town this November.   From an article by Jessica Lyons in the Monterey County Weekly:

Lawrence Samuels is running for a seat on the Carmel Valley Town Council. But he doesn’t want the job, and he doesn’t believe Carmel Valley should be a town.

On Nov. 3, residents will vote on incorporation. On the same ballot, they’ll also be asked to elect five leaders to sit on the Town Council, and they’ll vote on whether members of the council – in future elections – shall be chosen by district rather than at-large.

Of course, the latter two measures are moot if the majority of Carmel Valley voters say no to forming their own town. And that’s what Samuels, chair of the Monterey County Libertarian Party, wants them to do. He says incorporation will ruin the valley’s rural nature.

“The other side truly believes this [incorporation] is going to make Carmel Valley more quaint, but they don’t realize once they’re gone, and the city doesn’t have enough money, they are going to build hotels, give land away to developers, build big resorts.”

Libertarian Agrella Tops 5% In Special Congressional Election

On July 14 there was a special election to fill the 32nd congressional seat in Los Angeles being vacated by Obama's Labor Secretary appointee Hilda Solis. Libertarian Chris Agrella won 5.2% (1,356) of the votes as Democrat Judy Chu demolished Republican Betty Chu by 62% to 33%. The last 3-way election in CD32 was 2002, when the Libertarian got 3.7% and the Republican got only 27%. This was the first time in the last 30 years that an alternative CD32 candidate had broken the 5% barrier against R and D opposition.

How did Chris do it?  Here are some of the ways.

Libertarian Councilman Inks Helps Cut City's Costs

Libertarian John Inks of the Mountain View City Council is quoted in a July 14 Mountain View Voice article by Daniel DeBolt. Excerpts:

In contracts approved June 30, the City Council was able to cut scheduled pay raises in half over the next two years with the SEIU and the EAGLES, unions representing a total of 359 city employees who originally were getting a 3.2 percent annual raise. About eight police managers also agreed to reduce scheduled raises by 50 percent over two years.

No deal was reached with the major police and fire unions to renegotiate existing contracts with pay raises of over 3 percent a year.   "We worked real hard" over many "Tuesday afternoons at 5 p.m." to come to an agreement, said council member John Inks. "We did try with the POA and the firefighters," he added, "but we just couldn't get it done."

While the city's revenues are expected to remain flat, before the deals were made it was projected that personnel costs would increase by $3.8 million a year. Under the new contracts, the general fund will see a savings of $1.2 million over two years.

The city's eight department heads and the city manager, city clerk and city attorney have agreed to forgo raises of 3.2 percent for 2008-09 as well as merit bonuses in 2009-10.

SF Biz Times: Tax-hike Agenda Ruinous For Business

Today the LPSF blog excerpts a SF Business Times column by Mike Denny, the Libertarian Party's 2003 candidate for Mayor of San Francisco:


Would someone please tell Bay Area Council CEO Jim Wunderman property tax revenues have been rising without a constitutional convention to revise Proposition 13 (“Prop. 13 not off-limits to reformers,” July 3-9 issue).

According to the Board of Equalization, total property taxes collected in 2006-07 were $43.16 billion. The oldest property tax stats at www.caltax.org are for 1980-81. That year, property tax revenue was $6.36 billion. Property tax revenue increased by 579 percent since Prop 13 was implemented. During that time, the population went from 24 million to 38 million — an increase of 58 percent.

According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office’s budget database, in 1980-1981, total general and special fund revenue for California was $22.1 billion. For 2006-07, it was $120.7 billion. That is an increase of 555 percent. Property tax revenue went up faster than other sources of revenue.

Our own Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco recently published an article reporting that a dollar of government spending results in 70 cents of job-creating activity after two years. A dollar in tax cuts results in $1.30 to $3 of job-creating activity after two years. Does anyone out there get this? Government spending has a reverse “multiplier” effect on private sector (read taxpayers) jobs. [...]

New Nevada County Libertarian Party Leadership Appointed

From an article today in TheUnion.com:

Donn Coenen is trying to take a loose collection of Libertarians and build a strong political alternative with his recent appointment as temporary chairman of the Nevada County chapter.  “The biggest growing political group out there is ‘Decline to state,' so that gives us a big opportunity,” to attract new members.

“I'm also a Tea Party participant,” said Coenen, who lives in western Nevada County. “It reflects the Libertarian feelings about small government and less taxes.”

State Libertarian voter registration has increased from 80,000 to 83,000 since the November election, according to Beau Cain, a spokesman at the party's state office in the Los Angeles area. “Ever since the last presidential election, we've had a lot of phone calls asking for information,” Cain said. “They are really disgusted with the Republicans and Democrats and found they believe the same things we do. They want social tolerance and fiscal responsibility, in a nutshell.” [...]