Perhaps instead the city council should focus on how to reduce spending? Especially addressing the ongoing and future costs of public safety officers and their pensions and health care.

I think it's ABOUT TIME that made Google, FB, and all the big companies that have brought thousands of employees here to the bay area, causing all the traffic issues, over crowded schools and especially housing at a crisis level. They should quit getting tax breaks from government and start paying their share!

Why not raise the hotel tax instead? Mountain View has one of the lowest rates in the south bay?

There is a point that has been entirely overlooked in the rush to raise money to pay for a variety of pet projects that apparently can't be funded on their own merit. The $100 business license fee for a small firm (one or two employees) may sound reasonable to most people; however, for small contracting businesses that is major expense when you consider that most contractors are required to get business licenses for any city they work in.

Please consider all the small one and two person businesses which we all need: general contractors, electricians, plumbers, painters, roofers, AC/heating contractors, landscapers, etc. Most of these contractors work in quite a few cities in the Bay Area and have to pay a business license fee in each city which adds up quickly.

It seems to me that a business license should not be a money making opportunity to fund all sorts of sounds-good/feel-good projects, but rather it should be a way for the city to know exactly what businesses are operating within the city and to ensure they are legal and not a safety hazard to the city residents.

@Old Mountain Viewan

I bet you pay an absurdly low property tax rate, too low to be complaining about anyone paying their fair share.

@YIMBY, what do you consider "absurdly low"? I'm going to make a wild guess here and say that anyone paying taxes based on their purchase 30 years ago is absurdly low in your opinion. And I'll also absolutely guarantee that that same person would think the wage you make today is absurdly high.

Why is Google such a great place to work?....

Free food Lunch dinner and family and guests.
Free commute option package.

What does Mtn View lose out on and not helping the local economy.

Tax alone of free food $10x2x5 days = $9 $9 x 23,000 = $200,000 in lost food tax. Commute for 23,000 x $800 yearly potential loss to VTA for revenue. 18 million.

Don't you have the slightest bit of shame in paying far less than your fair share, and being a freeloader relative to your neighbors? Is that what our community is about, passing the buck to newcomers?

The City Council voted unanimously tonight to put both tax measures on the November ballot. The per employee tax will encourage the Council to support adding employees to Mountain View. The grass tax will encourage the Council to allow marijuana stores in Mountain View.

@mvresident2003

"And I'll also absolutely guarantee that that same person would think the wage you make today is absurdly high"

Of course they would. You guys seem to have entirely forgotten what inflation is and think people are still making 1990s dollars from their wages.

Inflation alone doesn't account for the soaring salaries paid by the Tech industry in Silicon Valley. The salaries are truly a quantum leap above what they were in the heyday of the formation of Silicon Valley.

But it goes beyond that. We have generations of self-entitled spoon fed people who feel they deserve a "Safe Space" at work and indulge all forms of political correctness. They think they deserve to buy a home at age 25. They say they are put upon by housing shortage when back 25 years ago almost no one had home ownership until their mid 30's or later. So it's a history rewrite.

The only one rewriting history here is you. Real wages have been stagnant for decades compared to inflation while school and housing costs have risen.

Newsflash Boomers: Millennials aren't making outrageous incomes relative to what you had. Even if you're a software engineer making $100k today, it's the equivalent of $50k in 1990.

Web Link

"They think they deserve to buy a home at age 25. They say they are put upon by housing shortage when back 25 years ago almost no one had home ownership until their mid 30's or later. So it's a history rewrite."

Actually...

"It's natural for prices to rise over time. But the issue here is that home values are outpacing inflation, making it nearly impossible for new and young buyers to enter the market.

Dramatically higher prices are partly why the typical homebuyer is now 44, whereas in 1981, the typical homebuyer was 25-34."

Web Link

Well I guess if you're only making $100K, you have an axe to grind. Assuming you're not a newby, you should be making ?$125K in salary, $20K in cash bonus and $45K in stock bonus. So that's more like $200K. Plus Google gives employees free lunch and dinner even if they take it home in a box. Tax free. That's an extra $6K a year right there, or $10K before taxes.

So the software engineer who made more like $50K in 1990 compares to a Google salary today of $210K which is about double in 1990 dollars (i.e. $100K) what the going rate was in 1990. And of course, with 5 years of experience you become senior with salary plus bonus of $200K and stock compensation worth $80K. That's where the difference really comes forward. $280K is like $140K back in 1990, or 2.3 times as much as senior salaries of $60K back in 1990. Not to mention the free food, tax free.

You're pulling numbers out of your rear to describe your idea of what the average software engineer makes when you're actually describing a small top percentile, and you're tacking on other forms of compensation to the current total when comparing it to only the salary compensation of the former total. You're also not accounting for higher cost of living outpacing inflation that eats into that.

But that's the point. Back in 1990, NO ONE got free sustenance day after day from his employer the way Google provides breakfast, lunch, dinner and Latte's. And stock options were reserved for a very few employees, typically founders of companies. A few companies had them for engineering workers, but they were not the constant revenue stream found in today's schemes. So it's fair to leave them out of the 1990 compensation. Also, bonuses were far less common than they are today.

Therein lies some of the key differences of today's entitled tech workers.

And yet today's entitled tech workers are still living with roommates (unless you really got up there in compensation, then you can afford to rent your own place). And again, you're not describing the average software engineer, but a top-percentile. Not every software engineer works at Google or Facebook and gets those large stock packages.

Face it, for how overly compensated you think this group is, it basically means they can live in San Francisco while spending $2,500 a month to rent a bedroom in a shared apartment in a good part of the city near Caltrain, or rent their own studio in a cheaper part of the Bay Area. And if you're a millennial that's not working in tech, where wages haven't kept up with inflation, it just means crowding in with more people in smaller spaces and moving further out.

I like how you haven't touched the housing statistics one bit. Average buyer age jumping from late 20s-early 30s all the way up to mid 40s is pretty damning. But hey, don't let me interrupt you going on about how entitled tech workers are.