By Linda Taaffe

Los Altos

Los Altos residents approved a ballot measure last week that could add an estimated $300,000 to the city’s piggy bank this year.

Measure A, the Transient Occupancy Tax, received 76.8 percent, or 2,917, of the yes votes, which will allow the Los Altos City Council to raise the tax on hotel rooms from the current rate of 8 percent to a maximum of 11 percent.

Only 23.2 percent, or 879 of those who went to the polls Nov. 6, voted against it. There are approximately 18,000 registered voters in Los Altos.

The occupancy tax hike will bring Los Altos’ tax up to the level comparable to neighboring cities Palo Alto and Mountain View, which each have a 10 percent hotel tax in place.

Assistant City Manager Starla Jerome-Robinson said she projects the tax to bring in about $300,000 this fiscal year, which ends in June 2002. Without the tax increase, the city might have only seen $155,000, she said.

Jerome-Robinson said she arrived at that amount based on the following assumptions: The 190-room Marriott hotel will open by the end of this year, charge $135 per room and maintain a 60 percent occupancy rate, and the council raises the tax to 11 percent.

Based on the slowing economy, Jerome-Robinson called her estimate “fairly optimistic.”

She said the city did not collect any hotel taxes this year, because there were no hotels. The city collected about $3,000 annually when the Four Season Motor Inn was open.

The money raised through the new tax will go into the city’s general fund, and the council will decide how to spend it.

Los Altos Mayor King Lear called the tax hike a “no brainer.” the state gives back to the city.

Lear said the hotel tax is effective immediately. The council was scheduled to set the new rate as soon as possible, he added.

The tax jump comes at a time when Los Altos has no hotels, but is expecting to open its first this month.

The 156-room Marriot Residence Inn is scheduled to open along El Camino Real this month; the 190-room Marriott Courtyard Hotel is scheduled to open down the street next year; and the council is currently finalizing a deal that could bring a 90-room boutique hotel to the corner of First and Main streets.