Community College Board Revives Tax Proposal

Emboldened by a new poll showing voters’ support for the plan, Los Angeles Community College trustees voted Wednesday night to revive a controversial proposal to levy an annual parcel tax on about 1 million properties in the county.

The 4-2 vote by the district’s Board of Trustees followed a report by a nationally known polling firm, which surveyed 1,000 district voters last month. The poll reported that 54% would support a levy of $12 per year on single-family homeowners and even larger margins of support for taxation at a lesser rate.

“I don’t think there’s any demographic group we talked to that dropped below 50%” support, said John Fairbank, a partner in the Santa Monica-based firm of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates. However, the poll showed that San Fernando Valley residents supported the tax to a lesser degree than any other region polled.

The district’s board has yet to decide on the exact amount of the tax they will pursue. But, the $12 proposal would generate an estimated $210 million per year to spruce up the campuses in the nine-college, 97,212-student district, the largest in the nation.

The proposed levy would affect every property owner in the 882-square-mile district, which includes the entire city of Los Angeles, including the Valley portion of the city, and other areas. In total, the tax would fall on about 45% of the 2.24 million parcels in Los Angeles County.

The district’s proposal to raise money for a wide array of facility improvements and added classes has drawn criticism on two counts. The first is that residents of the district would not have the opportunity to vote on the proposal that the board alone can adopt. Second, critics have called it an evasion of Proposition 13 tax limits.

The proposal is particularly controversial because the district plans to use part of the money, through a shifting of funds, to pay for hundreds of additional class sections.

Critics argue that the obscure 1972 state law that allows for the levies--outside the stricture of Proposition 13--was meant only for things such as landscaping and lighting improvements, not additional classes.

Various court rulings have upheld the right of public agencies to use the so-called landscape and lighting assessments for a variety of projects, and that the assessments generally do not violate Proposition 13. However, it remains unclear whether the district can use the funds as it has discussed because no court rulings have addressed those specific kinds of proposals.

“The poll results don’t prove anything regarding the legality or legitimacy of this project,” said Trustee Lindsay Conner, who voted against the plan along with Trustee Elizabeth Garfield. Trustee Julia Wu abstained.

With the board’s vote Wednesday, the district will begin a six-month process of public hearings and studies that will cost more than $500,000. Conner argued, however, that that effort will probably be thwarted in the end by a legal challenge that could leave the district unable to collect the money.

“To me, it’s a sham transaction,” he said.

However, board President David Lopez-Lee maintained that the proposal is much needed and “wholly legal,” and he gained backing from the district’s attorneys, who offered the same opinion. “We operate within the law, wholly within the law,” Lopez-Lee said.