a.The qualified electors shall in all cases be the landowners.

b.The City Clerk shall in all cases be the elections official.

c.Votes shall not be allocated on the basis of acreage of real property, but instead shall be allocated to each landowner on the basis of one vote for each dollar of special tax that would have been the obligation of that parcel (as determined by the City Council) if the proposed special tax had been in place for the 12-month period ending at the end of the month which is three months prior to the month in which the resolution calling the special, mailed-ballot election is adopted by the City Council. If a visitor accommodation facility was not operated during the whole of that 12-month period, or was operated at less than normal capacity due to remodeling or construction or reconstruction or any other cause, the number of votes to be allocated to the landowner of that parcel shall be determined by the City Council based on estimates presented to the Council utilizing data from other visitor accommodation facilities deemed most similar in size and quality and location (as determined by the City Council) to the visitor accommodation facility in question. The Council’s decision regarding the number of votes to be allocated to visitor accommodation facility properties shall be final.

d.The landowner-voters shall be those meeting the definition of landowner as of the close of the public hearing unless the City Clerk is informed, by reliable evidence, of a change in ownership after that time and prior to the election. In that event, the City Clerk shall, at the request of the new landowner submitted with such evidence no later than 24 hours before the deadline for returning ballots, prepare a new ballot and deliver it to the new landowner. The City Clerk shall also, in that event, accept and include in the canvass of the election the ballot submitted by the new landowner rather than the ballot prepared for the former landowner.

e.Since the landowner-voters are entitled to a secret ballot, and since ballots are required to contain the names of each landowner and the number of votes each landowner is entitled to cast, and since the number of votes assigned to each visitor accommodation facility may be considered to contain proprietary commercial information, the City Clerk shall protect the confidentiality of the ballots. No persons, other than those among the staff and consultants of the City who require access for the purposes of counting and canvassing the ballots, may have access to the ballots at any time, unless by order of a court of competent jurisdiction. (Ord. 3479 § 2, 2013)