OUR MISSION
We operate on a simple premise – once government gets into your pocket they never go away.
On December 11, 2012 the Newport Beach city council levied the largest tax increase on its Harbor residents in the city’s 107 year history. Newport Beach residential dock owners are committed to overturning this outrageous and unnecessary tax increase.
Our campaign to oppose the city’s proposed tax increase on 1,200 residential dock owners has entered a new phase. We continue to oppose the double-taxation on our docks. You already pay property tax on the value of your dock, now they imposed a tax of up to $5,000 per year, depending on your dock’s configuration.
In adopting the Dock Tax, the city also stripped away your property right to your dock. You build it, maintain it, pay taxes on it – now they can seize it for failure to pay the Dock Tax.
Balboa Island resident Bob McCaffrey has taken on the task of organizing the community to fight for the rights of taxpayers that have been trampled upon by this city council and staff. Organizational meetings are ongoing, a political action committee has been formed, legal counsel has been retained, and a substantial core of volunteers has been created.
This web site and our political action committee will fuel our effort.
This grassroots campaign started in McCaffrey’s Balboa Island living room with a few concerned residents that are tired of being nicked by fees, assessments, surcharges, administrative exactions, and every other revenue generating euphemism government can muster.
Newport Beach has a $263 million budget for just 86,000 people – including a $100 million reserve and an over-the-top $131 million city hall building. The Taj Mahal City Hall will cost Newport’s taxpayers $228.1 million over the next 30 years – over $8 million in annual mortgage payments. They don’t need to tax our docks, they need to prioritize their spending.
Over the past six months the city bureaucrats and politicians have already raised mooring taxes by 300%, commercial marina’s 366%, and other Harbor businesses by 183%. One long-time Harbor business was hit with a 700% tax hike – in a recession!
Just like Congress raiding Social Security to fund the federal budget, we think the city has poached the Tidelands fund for decades for projects that are unrelated to the maintenance and health of the Harbor.
A consistent theme of the meetings has been that this Dock Tax is supporting the pensions and salaries of Newport’s bloated bureaucracy. $200,000 lifeguards and a $228 million city hall are symbols of politicians that have lost their way.
