MEDICAL MARIJUANA????

Is there a surtax on aspirin? Cough syrup? bandaids?

There is a use for Cannabis which is strictly medicinal, often (but not always)prescribed by an MD. Why is it treated the same as fun stuff? Learn the difference (even if you find that difficult) and don't hit sick people over the head because you think doping is a sin.

$10 million is literally pocket change for Google. They should be happy to pay that amount for all of the city's infrastructure that they are using.

Mountain View raises $66 million from residents via sales and property taxes. This tax won't impact small businesses because it is designed to ask the biggest companies to pay there fair share.

Why not ask these companies making $9 BILLION profit in ONE QUARTER to match Mountain View taxpayers on a dollar to dollar basis? Let's raise $66M, $10M is peanuts!

Google will object to paying even small change. And Google execs will continue to push for passage of a bill (such as SB 827) that will destroy residential neighborhoods with highrises for Google's thousands of yet-to-arrive employees. Google cares about Mountain View the way a fat man cares about his toilet.

I do not know what has happened to this city that I loved and lived in for many decades. Once upon a time we all where happy when an employer had a job opening, and even better a high paying job. We once respected other rights, property rights, individual rights, now others just look at these people as evil and try to squeeze what ever they can get for themselves, mostly thru mob rules.

What has happened to the people today?

What has happened is that people no longer believe that corporations are just people too. Corporations are business entities that use resources - including employees from anywhere - to make more money. Corporations "care" about nothing. They are not human. But then, Mr."What a shame" knows all that. He is just doing his job.

I am not expert on tax, but whenever I saw a Waymo cursing on the road of my neighborhood, I wondered how much Google / Waymo paid to use public infrastructure to test their new products, let alone the hidden safety risks brought to the neighborhood. Whenever I saw a Google shuttle bus cutting in front of me, I wondered how much those shuttle buses contributed to traffic.

Uh...Sophie...buses generally reduce traffic because they take a bunch of cars off the road. You were probably the only person in your car, doing far more to create traffic than a bus...

Also, it's hilarious that the person above thinks adding more people somehow ruins a neighborhood. Cities are for people! This isn't a country club where you can select members and stop admitting new people!

LOL, yeah, sure, cities are for people who pay tax. if more people can contribute tax to enhance infrastructure and city service, they are welcome. Otherwise, I see freeloaders to compete with locals on resources, roads, and ruin life quality. Don’t you know there is limitation of occupancy and capacity?

Isn't this progressive California? You can only live here if you pay taxes? Poor people, tenants, children, all freeloaders? Guess the mindset that elected Trump is just as prevalent here.

"What a shame" is right. What happened to the people in this city?

I suspect the proposed marijuana tax is an excise tax, not included in the common meaning of the term "sales tax". I do agree, however, that medical uses of marijuana should not be taxed, ie, I think it is OK to tax recreational use of marijuana but not medical uses.

Also, I want to emphasize that we should be talking here about the actual drug (THC?, cannabis?), in the same sense that we should talk about taxing alcohol, not liquor. In other words, I think the tax of beer and whiskey should be based on the amount of alcohol in the beverage, not the quantity of the beverage; and I think the same concept should be used in taxing marijuana, whether sold as "weed" or as a pill.

9% on marijuana, that's locally. Add to that the 15% state tax on marijuana, and the 9% local sales tax per transaction. What is that? That is 33% added to whatever the person is spending to acquire their pot. State law allows medical marijuana users to purchase theirs without the state tax, so contrary to the first post, it IS treated differently than the fun stuff. And why should the fun stuff cost so much more to indulge in than alcohol which has already been legal for over 80 years?
As for Google, I say, stick it to 'em & I'm fine w/that. A Google bus may be taking cars out of traffic, but it's not so much fun maneuvering around one crossing the tracks at Central and Rengstorff when it's sitting there parked right in the bike lane. The city council might prove itself for once not beholden to them if they were actually putting the screws on them somewhere perpetually rather than kowtowing to their every blatant supplication with a new trail head, bridge, or bike path.