Opinion: Not just LAUSD
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The Los Angeles Unified School District put a $7 billion bond on the Nov. 4 ballot, but other districts are getting in on the act as well. Fifteen school districts in Los Angeles County, plus two community college districts, also are asking voters to approve bonds that would be paid back to investors through an increase in property taxes.
Several of the districts need approval from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors today for their measures to go forward. The supervisors’ vote to consolidate the bond issues on the county ballot is rote; but then, that’s what the MTA thought last week about its sales tax measure, which the supes rejected (they’re expected to reverse themselves today).
Most of the school districts are seeking to sell bonds in the measly millions of dollars, but the Long Beach District is asking for $1.2 billion. Pasadena schools want $350 million, and the William S. Hart Union High School District -- apparently the only school district in the U.S. named after a cowboy movie star -- is seeking $300 million. That district is in the Santa Clarita Valley, by the way.
The others: Santa Monica, $295 million; Torrance, $265 million; Pomona, $235 million; Centinela Valley Union High Schools (Lawndale/Hawthorne) $98 million; El Monte, $75 million; Whittier, $75 million; Manhattan Beach, $67.48 million; Westside (Antelope Valley) $63.5 million; Alhambra, $50 million; Rosemead, $30 million; and Acton-Agua Dulce, $13 million.
It would be a double-whammy for Los Angeles County property owners living in school districts that are overlapped by the Los Angeles Community College District, which is seeking a $3.5 billion bond issue; the Santa Monica Community College District, with a $295 million issue; and the Victor Valley Community College District, with $297.5 million.
A triple-whammy, actually, in most of Los Angeles, which is seeking a $36 parcel tax, and Long Beach, which is seeking $120 per parcel or dwelling unit. OK, it’s a quadruple-whammy, if the Board of Supervisors also approves an increase in the Measure B parcel tax, as it is scheduled to do today.
Each of these bond measures needs 55% of the vote to pass, under Proposition 39, a statewide measure from 2000. It is an exception to California law that has long required -- even before Proposition 13 -- a two-thirds vote to approve local general obligation bonds that are paid back with revenue from property tax increases.