The Sacramento City Council Really Doesn't Want This Ballot Measure To Pass!

But I'm just the kind of guy who will crawl through broken glass to darken the "Yes" bubble on the ballot!

Utility rates have been rising at greater rate than the CPI ever since I started paying utility rates, in 1998. And the rate of increase is accelerating, and in a recession too! This abuse has to stop, soon, and this ballot measure is one way to make it do so.

The ballot language could not be more screwed up. And it's likely to remain so too!:

The supporters of Measure B—also known as the Utilities Rate Rollback Initiative—are taking the city council to task over ballot language that they say is so convoluted and complicated, voters may have no clue what they are voting on.

Measure B qualified for the November 2 ballot earlier this summer. If approved by city voters, it would cancel a 9.2 percent hike in water, sewer and garbage rates that went into effect July 1. It also would limit the council’s power to raise rates in the future to annual increases in the consumer price index, requiring city
voter approval for rate hikes above the CPI.

On July 27, the Campaign for Common Sense Utilities Rates protested the ballot language at city hall and urged the council to rewrite it. When the council failed to take up the group’s request, Measure B supporters filed a petition for a writ of
mandate on August 6 in Sacramento Superior Court seeking a courtordered rewrite of the ballot question.

...“All we want is a fair election, not one tarnished by a city effort to confuse rather than inform city voters,” said Powell. “Barring last-minute judicial intervention, however, city voters should be prepared to sift through gobbledygook for a ballot question on Measure B in November.”

Here’s how the Measure B ballot question approved by the council reads:

Shall the ordinance repealing increases in monthly water, sewer, garbage/solid waste disposal service rates approved by the Sacramento City Council in June 2009, setting these monthly utility rates at the amounts in effect on February 2010, and allowing the City Council to increase these rates without voter approval beginning July 2012 only if the rates are not increased above the annual increase in a specifified consumer price index, be adopted?