Project tasks shall include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following described below. If the firm feels that additional tasks are warranted, they must be clearly identified in the firm’s proposal. Firms responding to this RFP shall be prepared to deliver services and perform the work necessary to provide the services within the timeline established for the project. The project consists of furnishing all labor, materials, supervision, and travel necessary to complete the tasks outlined below: Services will be associated with assessing voters’ attitudes toward City services, and determining if public support exists to adopt an enhanced one-half cent transactions and use tax. Additionally, assessing voters’ attitudes determining if public support exists to adopt a tax on gross rental income for residential and commercial property and the amount of an increase the public would support. The City has several research objectives to be addressed by the voter polling, the most important of which include: • determining baseline and informed support for a potential enhancement of the transactions and use tax; • assessing voters’ attitudes to determine if public support exists to adopt a tax on gross rental income paid by property owners for residential, industrial and commercial property rentals; • determining voter sentiment for support for various terms of said tax, such as another nine years, 15 years, 20 years, or permanently; • identifying the maximum tax threshold supported by the necessary percentage of Santa Maria voters based on the transactions and use tax tested; • examining the impact of various statements on voter support for potential revenue measures (arguments ‘for’ and ‘against’ the measures), including duration; • determining and ranking issues of importance to Santa Maria voters; • assessing spending priorities of voters in the City vis-à-vis the range of publicly provided services in the community; • collecting demographic information on voters in Santa Maria not already contained in the voter file for profiling and segmentation purposes;
