Neighboring school districts not as successful with parcel taxes

School districts throughout California have turned to parcel taxes to help close growing budget shortfalls as well as save teacher positions and popular student programs.

While these initiatives have had more success than not in recent years, there does not seem to be a sure-fire blueprint to convince a plurality of a community’s voters to increase their property taxes in order to help their local school district.

Last November, Culver City voters passed Measure EE, a parcel tax initiative that added $96 to the annual property taxes of landlords and homeowners and will raise $1.5 million over five years for the Culver City Unified School District. It won 74% of the vote, and the campaign was praised for its outreach and organization, but like most political initiatives, the message and how the campaign is conducted are the most important components, says a Culver City political consultant.

“Everything is in the message,” said Jewett Walker, Jr., who has run political campaigns for Culver City candidates, as well as at the county and state level.

In 2008, 17 out of 21 parcel tax proposals passed, according to School Services of California, a Sacramento consulting firm. Several more were approved last year during an era when school funding has been drastically slashed at the state level and local school district leaders are taking matters into their own hands.

The organizers of Measure EE, led by CCUSD board member Scott Zeidman and Madeline Erhlich, an ex--member of the local school board, were credited with formulating a strong and consistent message that focused on the need to avoid a larger number of layoffs as well as the loss of critical programs for students.

South Pasadena and Palos Verdes, communities that typically shun taxes, passed parcel levies last summer. The South Pasadena parcel tax will raise approximately $1.7 million for its school district and the Palos Verdes tax is estimated to bring in $3.3 million. And Novato Unified School District voters, which includes part of Marin County in the Bay Area, barely approved Measure A, which won by a 67% margin.

Not all parcel tax measures have been successful.

The Pleasanton School District near San Francisco tried to pass Measure G, which garnered 61.7% of the vote last spring. The initiative’s loss increases the challenges to the district, said Myla Grasso, a school district spokeswoman.

“We would be unable to bring back any of those reductions at this point in time,” she said.

In addition, measures in Santa Monica, Long Beach and Los Angeles have also lost, the latter two by wide margins.

In 1991, Culver City failed in its attempt to pass a parcel tax measure. Former CCUSD school board member Barbara Honig thinks the organizers of Measure EE learned valuable lessons from the earlier campaign that allowed last year’s initiative to be successful.

“They were very open about why they wanted (the parcel tax) from the beginning,” Honig said.

“This time, they communicated to the public a lot better how much they were seeking, what the money was for and why the school district and the students needed additional revenue.”

Timing is also important in any election, says Walker.

“There was a school board election on the ballot, and the opportunity to elect three new members to the board for the first time in eight years,” said Walker, who managed board member Patricia Siever’s campaign last year. “(Measure EE) also had the support of almost all of the candidates and many of the city’s elected officials.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which has a budget deficit of $640 million and has laid off thousands of employees in recent years, had been planning to bring a parcel tax measure to the public for several months and the initiative barely scaled the 50% mark.

“Although we did not garner the 66% of votes needed to pass, 52.9% support shows that the majority of the community believes in the teachers, administrators and classified employees in the district,” LAUSD Superintendant. Ramon Cortines wrote in a letter to L.A Unified employees after Measure E, which would have raised more than $92 million, was defeated. “They recognize the importance of your work.”

Honig, an assistant principal for an LAUSD school, noted the differences between a small school district like Culver City and LAUSD, the nation’s second-largest school district.

“In a smaller city, school board members are definitely more accessible,” she said. “LAUSD is so big, and there are a lot of people there who feel that they’ve lost trust in the leadership.”

LAUSD is also comprised of many smaller, far-flung neighborhoods where the same sense of community is not felt as it may be in places like Santa Monica, Pasadena or Culver City.

“In large districts like LAUSD, it’s very difficult to get a unified message across,” Walker added.

A National Public Radio program last year noted that in smaller, more affluent communities, parcel levies tend to have more success, like Palos Verdes. But Santa Monica has wealthy, high-profile residents and Long Beach is also dotted with pockets of affluence.

Dr. Robert Knopf pointed out another dynamic that he thinks affected the passage of Measure EE that was not present in 1991.

“The community was younger this time,” said Knopf, who served on the CCUSD school board in 1990s.

Knopf agrees that the school district can use a helping hand during an era of budget shortfalls but feels that the parcel tax was inherently unfair.

“It should have been more of a graduated tax,’ he said.

Santa Monica voters, who historically have strongly supported their school district, have turned away two propositions in 2008 and 2010 that would have increased the tax burden on its well-heeled residents but raised revenue for the Santa Monica--Malibu Unified School District. Last month, Measure A won 64.2% of the vote, falling short of the needed 67%.

“We always struggle in parcel tax elections,” former SMMUSD board member Kathy Wisnicki lamented in an interview with the online publication The Outlook.

Walker believes it was a matter of not running an effective campaign.

“I’m actually surprised that (Measure A) did not pass,” the political consultant said. “People in Santa Monica will do almost anything for their schools.”

Having that interpersonal connection with the voters can make all the difference in campaigns where voters are asked to tax themselves, Honig said.

“The key (with Measure EE) was trust,” she said. “In Culver City, our residents realized that they were investing in their future, and they knew where the money was going.”

And it could very well be a combination of good fortune, good campaigning and, as Walker said, timing. Zediman, in an interview with the News the night after the results of Measure EE were announced, seemed to agree.

“It was the right measure, at the right price, for the right time.”