San Diego’s Zoo May Save the Day for Tax Bill Exception

If they could talk to the animals, local officials in six California cities just might say “thanks” to inhabitants of San Diego’s world-famous zoo.

Lawmakers determined to get the last remaining loopholes out of Proposition 13’s limitation on Californians’ property taxes wrote an exception last week into two bills making their way through the Legislature after pleas were made on behalf of the zoo, which benefits from a special two-cent property tax approved by voters 50 years ago.

If the exception remains, the bill eventually adopted will also allow five other cities, including Brea and Garden Grove, to collect special taxes for paramedics and libraries.

The six special taxes, which together raise $3.1 million in annual revenues, all were approved by voters before the 1978 tax-slashing initiative, which limits local tax rates to 1% of the cash value of property.

The tax limit bills sponsored by Assemblyman Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles) and Sen. Milton Marks (R-San Francisco) are aimed at permanently closing a gap in Proposition 13’s limits that was opened by the state Supreme Court in a 1982 decision.

The court said cities and counties could raise taxes above the limit to pay for voter-approved debts incurred before the initiative passed.

Legislative analysts estimated that cities and counties could eventually levy more than $1 billion in new taxes if the loophole opened by the Supreme Court decision were not closed.

Both the Roos and Marks bills would allow cities and counties that have adopted such overrides to keep them but would allow no such tax levies in the future.

And, under narrow definitions drafted to comply with the Supreme Court decision, neither bill, as originally written, would have allowed special pre-Proposition 13 taxes like the one for the San Diego Zoo. But both were amended last week during committee hearings.

Several local officials, including Garden Grove Mayor Jonathan Cannon, came to Sacramento to help save these special taxes. But it was the San Diego Zoo tax, which has been tacked onto the city’s property tax bills since the mid-1930s, which persuaded lawmakers to make the exception.

The zoo tax, the oldest and largest of the six special taxes, raised $1.5 million last fiscal year--a significant chunk of the zoo’s $30 million annual operating budget, zoo officials say.

The tax revenues cover the payroll for the zoo’s 28-person staff of gardeners, planters and botanists, said Dick Binford, deputy executive director of the San Diego Zoological Society. Were it eliminated, Binford said, some of the gardening staff would have to be laid off and educational programs would suffer, because money would have to be diverted to the gardening effort.

San Diego voters enacted the zoo tax in a 1934 charter amendment that was approved by 60% of the city’s voters.

Supporters of the exception to allow special voter-approved taxes for specific programs say voters never intended to eliminate the zoo tax and other special levies when they voted for Proposition 13.

Just as anti-tax zealots can argue righteously that Proposition 13’s 1% tax limit is the “will of the people,” city officials in San Diego, Brea, Garden Grove, Alameda, Napa and Vacaville argue that those special taxes also represent the people’s will.

“If you thought it was easy to pass a tax in 1934, you weren’t around in 1934,” said Sen. William Craven (R-Oceanside), hushing even the representative of Howard Jarvis’ California Taxpayers Assn. and others arguing for no exceptions at all in the proposed new law.

The prospect of losing the tax revenues “was obviously of great concern to us,” said Brea City Manager Ed Wohlenberg. Had the legislature eliminated the 4 1/2-cent tax for paramedics that the city voters adopted in 1978--a few months before Proposition 13--the City Council most likely would have adopted a fee for emergency medical services, Wohlenberg said.

“I don’t think the citizens would stand for us dropping the paramedic services,” said Wohlenberg. “But what are you going to do with a general fund when you take a half million dollars out of it?”

Wohlenberg said the city was planning on adding another half cent to the tax before the 1983 moratorium was adopted.

Legislative observers expect that either the Roos bill or the Marks bill will be approved. Administration spokesmen have indicated that although Gov. George Deukmejian supports a permanent property tax limit, he will sign the bill that is ultimately approved.

The zoo tax should not be a problem, said Deukmejian Administration spokesman Huston Carlyle. “I think we can live with that.”

As approved by Assembly and Senate committees last week, the two bills are identical except for another exception in the Senate version for Pasadena, which local officials said could go bankrupt without a tax hike to help pay the cost of a generous pension plan for fire and police personnel who retired before 1977.

The Senate version would allow a special tax for Pasadena’s pension debt if 60% of voters approve it.

Carlyle had said the Governor would likely veto the bill if Pasadena were allowed to adopt a special tax by majority vote.