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Operation Defund Sanctuary Cities

As featured on front page of Breitbart News .

American Children First launched "Operation Defund Sanctuary Cities " on May 30, 2017 when its founder, Joseph Turner, filed an initiative to repeal the City of Cudahy's utility user taxes (UUTs).

Cudahy declared itself a sanctuary city in 2015 and generates more than $1 million in revenue from this tax. This revenue accounts for more than 13 percent of their General Fund budget. UUTs are taxes paid by residents and business owners on water and trash bills, electricity and gas bills, and on landline and cell phone bills.

More than 150 cities across California tax the utility bills of their residents and businesses in some form or fashion. And for many of these cities, the UUT is a significant component of their General Fund budget.

American Children First plans to file initiatives throughout California in cities that have declared themselves sanctuary cities.

In California, residents have the power to circumvent their legislative bodies and put measures directly before the voters to be voted upon. These are called initiatives and they can be done at the city, county and state levels.

The general requirement to place an initiative on the ballot is that proponents must gather signatures totaling 10 percent of the number of registered voters.

In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 218 which was a measure designed to protect taxpayers from higher taxes. One of the key aspects of this measure and one that is largely ignored and unknown is that it changed the initiative signature requirement on measures concerning the repeal of taxes and fees.In order to qualify tax repeal measures you only have to gather signatures equaling 5 percent of the total votes cast in the last gubernatorial election. This signature requirement is significantly lower than the traditional 10 percent formula mentioned above.

For example, the City of Torrance has approximately 150,000 residents and 85,000 registered voters. A regular initiative would require 8,500 signatures to be placed on the ballot. A Prop 218 initiative only requires 1,680 signatures based on the 2014 voting results. The City of Cudahy only requires 62 signatures.

Our goal is to place these tax repeal measures on the ballot in many different cities with the hope and expectation that the voters will help defund their own sanctuary cities by voting to lower their taxes.

Filing Initiatives Isn't Free

The beauty of our campaign to defund sanctuary cities is that we can put measures on the ballot that will significantly impact their revenue streams with minimal effort and cost.

However, there is a cost and we are just a grassroots organization with limited resources.​

In fact, since we launched American Children First we have received donations totaling less than the filing fee for this initiative.​

​The filing fee for each initiative American Children First files costs $200. This is a state mandated fee.

Additionally, we must file a legal notice in newspapers of general circulation. And on top of that we have to pay for printing of initiative petitions.

Therefore, most initiatives cost at anywhere from $300-600 just to get off the ground and begin the signature gathering process.

We are setting a goal of $30,000 because we hope to raise enough money to launch at least a dozen campaigns simultaneously.

Additionally, since I cannot gather signatures on my own for several initiatives at once, these funds will be used to also pay for signature gatherers, finding volunteers, and on other materials and items needs to scale up the operation.

Thank you for your support.

Joseph Turner, Founder

American Children First

Additional Links:

Fox 11 News Coverage: 

http://www.foxla.com/news/local-news/257967632-story

Organizer

Joseph Turner
Organizer
Torrance, CA

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