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Council adopts urgency ordinance to align Benicia code with voters' Measure B transaction tax
Summary
After voters approved Measure B increasing the transaction and use tax, the council adopted an urgency ordinance to update municipal code section 3.2207(o) to a 1.75% use tax rate and also introduced the non-urgency ordinance for a second reading.
Deputy City Manager Sarah Schockey explained that voters in March 2024 approved Measure B, raising Benicia's transaction and use tax by 0.75 percentage points to a total rate of 1.75%. Schockey told the council the state had begun collecting the additional transaction-and-use tax and staff had identified that the local code section setting the use-tax rate had not yet been updated.
"So the item before you is to update section 3.2207(o) to correctly state the applicable use tax rate of 1.75%," Schockey said, and she asked the council to adopt an urgency ordinance so the code would match what voters approved and what the state is collecting. The city attorney (Ben Stock) explained the urgency ordinance allows immediate effect; staff also presented a standard ordinance for first reading to guard against legal challenge.
Council adopted the urgency ordinance (supermajority vote required and achieved) and then approved the standard ordinance for a normal second reading and adoption on the regular schedule.
Why it matters: the action is a code cleanup to make the municipal code align with the voters' decision and the state's collections; it corrects internal ordinance language and avoids legal ambiguity.
