Fiscal Year 2013-2015 Special Budget Meeting

HONORABLE MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL Subject: Proposed FY 13-15 Proposed Policy Budget Date: June?, 2013 Page 3 2) Are there ways to increase the City's parking revenue? Staff estimates of revenue from the booting partnership are based upon a report from the City's parking consultant PayLock. This report demonstrates the revenue estimate for the parmership on booting closely aligns with the revenue estimate in Year 2. This revenue is in addition to the normal collection of parking citation revenue. The consultant report analyzes the one-time revenues which could be generated by combining the citation records of the partnership cities to produce a larger number of boot eligible vehicles. The report factors in a realistic collection ratio as the program is unlikely to collect on all boot eligible tickets. 3) Regarding Question 6 in the May 13,2013 Budget Supplemental (p. 33), the response mentioned that the City Ordinances establishing the business license tax and transient occupancy tax contain exemptions. Please list all of the exemptions. [Please also provide copies of or appropriate citations for the ordinances] Additionally, as an example of the original question, are local operators of so-called "Air BnB" facilities not currently paying the City's transient occupancy tax? With respect to Transient Occupancy Tax, the only exempt persons are those specifically protected by federal law or international treaty, provided a governmental agency qualifying for this exemption is the taxpayer. Providers of lodging through services like Air BnB are required to pay Transient Occupancy Taxes. Improving tax enforcement on such small scale providers is an ongoing project for City of Oakland staff For Business License Tax, those that qualify for exemptions include: Small businesses with less than $2,800 in gross receipts (however such enterprises are required to file annually for a business license and pay a one-time $60 registration fee); organizations that qualify for not-for- profit status under federal and state law; owners of an affordable housing project that have received federal or state low income housing tax credits are exempt from the payment of business taxes on the portion of gross receipts received in connection with such an affordable housing project; and, Family daycares licensed by the State of California Department of Social Services for fourteen (14) children or less are exempt from the business license tax. Please refer to Attachment E for the Relevant Municipal Code Sections for Transient Occupancy Tax and Business License Tax Exemptions. 4) On p. D-59 of the Proposed Budget, the Gasoline Tax revenue for FY 13-14 through FY 17-18 is flat. The exact same amount listed for FY 12-13 is projected for the subsequent years. With the economy going up, why is this tax projected as flat? Gas tax revenue is a per gallon surcharge collected by the State of California. A portion of this surcharge is kept by the state for transportation purposes and another portion is distributed to local entities. Because the tax is a per-gallon charge, it does not keep pace with increases in fuel expenditures. Future increases in the volume of gasoline purchases due to economic growth are expected to be offset by improvements in average fuel economy, larger numbers of alternatively