Most school bonds, parcel taxes win despite hard economic times
Published: December 1, 2011
Despite a flagging economy, voters in nearly a dozen California communities last month demonstrated their willingness to tax themselves to support local K-12 schools, approving six of seven bond measures and five of seven parcel taxes that will cumulatively provide about $700 million for schools.
CSBA has posted the Nov. 8 parcel tax and bond measure election results under the Spotlight section of its website.
Of the seven parcel taxes on the ballot, only those in Monterey County’s Pacific Grove Unified School District and in the Las Virgenes Unified School District in Ventura and Los Angeles counties failed to garner the required two-thirds majority. With Pacific Grove USD’s measure receiving 56.3 percent and Las Virgenes USD’s 61.4 percent, both would have passed if the requirement were changed to 55 percent, as education advocates have long called for.
San Mateo County’s San Bruno Park School District’s Measure O was the only bond measure that failed to meet the 55 percent vote threshold required for bond passage, although Measure G in the Newark Unified School District barely squeaked by with 55.8 percent of the vote.
An impressive 73.8 percent of those who cast ballots in the Mammoth Unified School District voted yes on the district’s proposal to extend an existing $59 per-parcel tax for an additional five years, and 72.4 percent of voters in the Tamalpais Union High School district agreed to continue paying an average of $238 per parcel for an additional 10 years.
San Francisco County Unified School District’s $531 million bond measure won with 70.8 percent approval.
‘Schools have gotten good at this’
Michael Coleman, a fiscal policy adviser at the League of California Cities, said the education community has learned to run sophisticated parcel tax and bond campaigns. “Public agencies need to talk to their communities, phrase their measures well and be sensitive to what’s going on locally,” he said. “Frankly, schools have gotten good at this.”
Coleman said the bad economy probably kept the ballot short, with fewer revenue-generating measures before voters this year than in a similar off-cycle election four years ago.
Charlie Mensinger, president of the board of education in the Newark Unified School District, agreed that communicating with likely voters was key.
“We were not greedy, and we worked exceptionally hard to ensure we understood what the community could tolerate in terms of funding and where they wanted to see the money go,” he said.
As part of Newark’s $63 million bond campaign, school supporters provided details about state and district finances, were specific about planned upgrades to classrooms, libraries and science laboratories, and pointed out how much money the district could save in energy bills with certain facility improvements.
“I am truly humbled by the support in our community given that we are asking them to underwrite what the state should fund for an appropriate education,” Mensinger said. “In the end, the district—teachers, classified, and management—banded together to call, knock on doors, mail fliers, and just plain sell our case to the community; an extraordinary effort indeed.”
At a joint legislative hearing of the state Senate and Assembly Education committees last month—called to consider the subject of sustainable school facilities—facilities experts cited the Nov. 8 election results as evidence that California voters might look favorably on a statewide general obligation bond for school facilities if one were placed on the ballot in 2012.