Sal Tinajero was the Santa Ana City Councilman who put Measure X on the ballot – which gave Santa Ana the highest sales tax rate in Orange County (read about that here). Tinajero was running for Santa Ana Mayor when Measure X passed. He lost that race but now he is running for Mayor again – and apparently he has not learned his lesson. Tinajero is once again trying to raise taxes for Santa Ana residents!
Tinajero now serves on the board of the Rancho Santiago Community College District and in that capacity he recently voted for more taxes through yet another massive school bond for the RSCCD.
Bond measures are not free money! Residents have to pay them back and the kicker is that the interest is equal to the value of the bond. So if you borrow $200M then the residents have to pay that back PLUS another $200M in interest! It is a giant ripoff – and doing this to residents as we all suffer from inflation makes this even worse.
It is worth noting that the RSCCD tried to raise our taxes as recently as 2020 with Measure L – a gigantic $495M bond measure that thankfully failed.
Measure Q was passed in 2012 – that bond measure was for $198M.
The RSCCD’s first bond measure, Measure E, passed in 2002, for $337M.
The RSCCD also passed a union-only Project Labor Agreement that banned non-union contractors from working on any projects related to these bond measures. This means they ended up overpaying for the construction projects and of course most of the projects were not completed in time.
Tinajero does not care if Santa Ana residents get taxed again. This cavalier attitude doomed his last Mayoral campaign and will most likely result in yet another loss in the upcoming November General Election.
