Most parcel taxes defeated this week
More would pass with 55% threshold
California voters continue to be generous when it comes to renovating and building schools. But at least in the latest election, they refused to spend any more money running them.
Only two of 17 K-12 parcel taxes on Tuesday’s ballot got the two-thirds majority needed to pass, although a couple came excrutiatingly close. Even in usually parcel-tax friendly Silicon Valley, voters said no.
The big ones that went down were San Diego Unified, with only 50 percent of voters backing a $98, five-year parcel tax; East Side Union High School District in San Jose, with 57 percent of voters backing a $98, six-year tax; and Oakland Unified, where an ambitious $195 tax came within a percentage point of the required 66.7 percent.
The two parcel taxes that passed were in Berkeley, with 80 percent support for a $63, 10-year tax; and nearby Fremont Union, with 69 percent behind a modest $53, 5-year tax.
If the threshold had been 55 percent, the same as needed to pass a construction bond, a dozen of the 18 parcel taxes would have passed. Beside San Diego Unified, those falling below 55 percent were Pomona Unified, Auburn Union, Travis Unified and Cutler-Orosi Unified. In Tuesday’s election, 43 of 62 bond measures on the ballot passed. Sen. Joe Simitian of Palo Alto has proposed a constitutional amendment lowering the parcel tax threshold to 55 percent, but it has languished for lack of not even one Republican vote.
Maybe it the voters’ sour mood, or a ballot with other competing requests, like the $18 state license fee to support state parks that went down, or the numbers of angry conservatives turning out to vote that doomed the parcel taxes. Between a May mail ballot election and the June primary election, eight of 10 Santa Clara County districts passed parcel taxes. This week, the two K-12 parcel taxes in Santa Clara County lost, as did a proposed parcel tax for the Foothill-DeAnza College District. It would have become only the second community college district to approve one.
The defeat of the parcel taxes will leave school districts facing steep cuts. San Diego, facing a possible $141 million deficit, is projecting hundreds of teacher layoffs. The parcel tax would have brought in $50 million per year.
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SVEF is the education foundation advocating for the needs of school districts across Silicon Valley. SVEF seeks to improve public education through establishing partnerships with the private sector and the education community ..
I am glad that most parcel taxes were defeated. The major reason so many went through earlier this year is because school districts gamed the system with non-standard election dates and they snuck by most voters.
To see the reason why they failed, and why they should have failed, check the change in state, local, federal, and private jobs since January of 2008 here: http://www.nypost.com/rw/nypost/2010/09/06/news/photos_stories/edit_graphic203349.jpg
The 2/3 requirement is the only thing that stands between a normal citizen and the local and state governments robbing him when he is busy trying to make a living.
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East Side’s brushes with fiscal scandal did not help.
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One thing to keep in mind is that most school parcel taxes have also an exemption for seniors while bond measures don’t. If you put the exemption aside, it’s not clear that the just failed school parcel taxes would have cleared the 55% threshold.
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It is not that the taxpayers are more generous in passing measures for school brick and mortar but that they are stingy about passing Parcel Taxes for operating what happens within the brick and mortar. For some reason a lot of the voters do not see School Bonds as taxes and are oblivious to the fact that bonds plus interest must be paid by property owners through property taxes. The costs take a bit longer to show up on Property Tax bills, so the delusion feeds on itself. That may also have been a contributing factor to lowering the threshold to pass bond measures to 55% .
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By US D.of Ed. figures, $/pupil in inflation-adjusted dollars increased 3.6 times from $2,769 in 1961 to $10,041 in 2007 in public education. Inflation-adjusted. 3.6 times. And what do we have to show for it? 3.6 times better education?
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
Public education always wants more. No educator has ever said:
“We need $X to do the job. Any more would pass a point of diminishing returns and probably be largely wasted.”
Until educators can do that, they leave the public to make the call for them.
Most class rooms I have seen have a “No Whining” sign yet all educators ever do is whine about money, parents, kids, charter schools, salaries, accountability, standards, pensions, etc., etc., ad nauseum. They want to give out grades but not be graded, get more money but not be asked to be held accountable for it. It’s getting old.
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