A tax based on headcount makes sense to me. Taxes based on revenue or space don't make much sense if the money is earmarked for transportation projects. I assume that each part-time workers counts separately, so this tax should encourage employers to convert part-timers to full-time, which is good for both employees and transportation.

Is the $50 mentioned in the article an annual tax? That seems like a minimal amount to me compared to the headache that all these extra cars are causing.

The city should also look into giving tax breaks to companies with a substantial number of employees using non-car transportation (eg Caltrain, bicycle, etc).

More specificity on what it will be used for, and
a real citizen oversight board that reports to the council and the public would convince me to vote for it.
Real citizens, not people appointed by the city manager.

A $50 or $100 per employee charge does very little to stop or alleviate congestion. Those fees are a mere drop in the bucket when you figure that that the city wants to pay to full fare cost of public transit costs for commuters coming into Palo ALto. For those coming from San Francisco, that's $8 a day or $2,704 a year so that's a huge shortfall. Those there's a $500 gap between what we'd be paying carpoolers.

Please stop pretending business charge would do anything t "fix" the problem the city has allowed to fester. Don't give the city more money to waste.

From this day forward, I am only voting for taxes in which the goals or even projects are spelled out specifically. People vote for ideas and the reality is that there is little to no accountability. The school district's Measure A, which we had to pass or 80 teachers would be laid off went largely to greater increases in teacher salaries than the handsome increases they would have gotten otherwise.

I honestly feel this tax is confusing in design due to all the complexities of how a business is run. If a business has a constant number of full time employees that all travel from out of town it would be OK, but how many businesses really function like that.

Is the tax for the number of total employees during the year, or the number at a given date in the year? Many businesses have season fluctuations of employees e.g. take on more employees for the summer or the holidays.

Is the tax for employees who are full time or part time and what about those that jobshare?

Is the tax the same for those whose employees live so close that they walk to work as those who have to commute 5 miles or more?

I am also concerned about somewhere like the Winter Lodge. Their employees are often high school students who bike or walk to get there and only work a couple of shifts a week so the numbers of employees is quite high compared to the number of staff working at any given time. Putting a minimum wage of $15 on part time 16 year old workers and then making this tax would mean that the cost of a couple of kids in skating lessons or a family evening of fun or a fun hangout for teens could run much higher and ultimately lose business for one of the few fun recreational activities we have in town for families and teens. It is a non profit, but it does have many employees and does have to balance its books.

Of course, it gets back to the question of how many people are actually employed in any given business. When Facebook was on California Ave. we could never get that information. They simply didn't know. Good luck, this sounds like a real messy on the implementation side of things.

How can we trust them to use the tax money properly? Is there an accountability system that ensures every dollar of this new tax goes towards improving transit?

I doubt it, but no one ever bothers to ask this question. Many well-intentioned Palo Alarms will vote for this tax measure with total, blind trust in their government.

I contend that raising taxes fundamentally lacks any kind of correlation with improved transit.

They just want your $$$ OBVIOUSLY

Palo Alto's $50 tax is petty compared to the 1.5% payroll tax that San Francisco is considering. That's more than $2000 for your average techie. Web Link