La Cañada school officials weigh potential bond measure that would fund facility improvements
As La Cañada school officials draft a facilities master plan to identify long-term building and infrastructure needs, board members were briefed Tuesday on how a bond on the November 2017 ballot might raise the capital necessary to fulfill those needs.
La Cañada Unified School District Governing Board members heard two presentations — one on determining the feasibility of a general obligation bond and bringing it to market on next year’s ballot, and the other on how much the district could conceivably raise in this manner.
Charles Heath, principal with the San Francisco-based TBWB Strategies, shared a possible time line for gauging public interest in a bond before placing the measure before district voters in the Nov. 7, 2017, election.
The consultant, who worked with the district to help pass parcel taxes in 2009 and 2014, called a bond measure, by comparison, “a much more complicated animal, because it funds this very long laundry list of very specific projects school by school throughout the district and for a much longer time horizon.”
If approved by 55% or more of voters, a bond would collect a certain amount of money (still to be determined) for every $100,000 assessed value of a district resident’s property, over a span of decades, to help fund capital improvements and infrastructure upgrades at La Cañada Unified school campuses.
Heath explained officials should begin polling area residents in January to get feedback on several different tax assessment scenarios, to allow the district to hone in on what voters would be willing to pay for. That data, in turn, could help fine tune the range and scope of projects identified in the facilities master plan.
Following that would be a consensus-building period in which community members could ask questions and share concerns about the proposed bond measure while it’s still in the planning phases.
“This process is really set up to make sure we’re sussing out any potential sources of opposition and concern that we can fix up front during the planning process that, once the measure’s on the ballot, we can’t fix,” Heath told board members.
With consensus reached, board members would create bond measure language and prepare resolutions and documents for the 2017 election and voter pamphlet. The deadline for having that work completed is 88 days before the election, or Aug. 11.
The school district would then step away from the process and let community advocates pick up the cause, campaigning before voters through phone banks, door-knocking sessions and face-to-face talks, Heath explained.
Figures indicate 13,168 registered voters live inside LCUSD’s boundaries. Only 43% of those — about 5,600 voters — are expected to participate in the November 2017 election. The school district would need 55% or more of those voters, at least 3,080 individuals, to vote in favor of the bond for it to pass.
Adam Bauer, chief executive officer and president of Irvine’s Fieldman, Rolapp and Associates, provided a rough sketch of different funding scenarios that could raise anywhere between $43 million and $128 million through a general obligation bond.
Right now, district residents are paying about $60 per assessed $100,000, the maximum amount that can be levied for a single bond, for outstanding bonds passed in the last two decades. The oldest of those, passed in a 1995 election, is set to run out by 2021, at which point the tax rate will drop to about $30, according to Bauer’s figures.
LCUSD officials have several different options — for example, a new bond that would keep those rates at $30 and collect about $43.2 million over its lifetime, or another that would raise current rates by an additional $30 and collect $78.2 million.
When new rate limits and additions of $45 and $60 are considered, the district could stand to raise up to a projected $128.8 million, Bauer explained. With limits in place, the district can begin surveying community stakeholders to determine an appropriate and passable threshold for next year’s ballot.
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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com
Twitter: @SaraCardine
