Compromise Rejected on Santa Clarita School Issues

A school administrator representing five districts in the fast-growing Santa Clarita Valley offered Wednesday to drop plans to tax developers to pay for new schools if the two sides can agree on an alternate plan before Tuesday’s election.

But a developers’ representative rejected a proposal that builders agree to foot the entire bill for new schools--an amount that could total $200 million over 20 years--and accept whatever state funds become available as reimbursement.

Richard Wirth, executive director of the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, said developers are willing to pay part of school construction costs and to work with school administrators and state officials to solve the area’s school crowding problems.

“No one segment of society should pay for the total cost of schools,” he said at a debate on the issue. “We feel very strongly that the state must participate.”

Proposition Arguments

More than 150 people attended the 7:30 a.m. breakfast debate in Valencia to hear arguments for and against six ballot propositions in which the five school districts--Hart, Castaic, Newhall, Saugus and Sulphur Springs--have proposed taxes averaging about $6,000 on each new residential unit to finance school construction.

Hamilton C. Smyth, superintendent of the William S. Hart Union High School District, said the districts must build 24 schools at a cost of about $200 million within the next 20 to 25 years to accommodate new students. The first, a new high school costing $30 million, must be open by 1991, he said.

With 30,000 new residential units in various stages of the permit process, Los Angeles County planners expect the Santa Clarita Valley’s population to increase from its present 103,000 to 213,000 by the year 2000, bringing enrollment increases of about 12,000 students in the elementary schools and 7,000 in high schools.

School districts, Smyth said, have no money to build the schools and searched for other solutions before turning to the developer tax.

Smyth said the state has $200 million in aid available for school construction statewide, but has already approved $1.2 billion in building projects. None of the approved projects is in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Although the local districts favor Proposition 53, an $800-million state school bond issue on the November ballot, Smyth said there is no guarantee that they will receive any of the money from the bond issue.

He repeated a pledge that school officials have made often since trustees of the five districts voted last summer to place the tax measures on the ballot: “If we do not need the tax, we will not levy it.”

Wirth said builders were “a bit overwhelmed” earlier this year when the districts released their projections of the number of new students.

Developers want and need the new schools to help them sell houses, he said, but they believe a better solution is contained in a series of measures approved Sept. 15 by the state Legislature.

1988 Bond Measure

The bills, which include legislation that authorized Proposition 53, also count on voter approval of a second $800-million bond measure in 1988 and $600 million in revenue over four years from the state’s tideland oil revenues.

“It’s not the total answer,” he said, “but it is a beginning.”

Wirth said the legislation, which developers favor, does not “take builders off the hook” because passage of the bond measure on Tuesday will allow school districts to impose a fee of up to $1.50 per square foot on new residential development to build schools.

The $1.50 fee, however, would be about half of what the local districts are proposing for a 2,000-square-foot home, and, if those measures pass, many first-time home buyers could be priced out of the market, Wirth said.

“It will not be builders who will pay the tax,” he said. “It will be the consumer.”

Tax Rate Proposals

Each local school district has set tax rates according to its needs. In Proposition N, appearing on ballots of voters who live in the Newhall, Saugus and Sulphur Springs elementary districts, the Hart high school district, which educates students throughout the area, has set a maximum tax rate of $3,439 per residential unit.

In Proposition M, the Hart district is asking voter approval of a $2,418 fee within the Castaic district attendance area. The lower rate was set in Castaic because the elementary district there educates kindergartners through eighth-graders, whereas the other districts send their seventh- and eighth-grade students to the Hart district.

Tax rates for the elementary districts, which would be added to the Hart District tax, are $3,783 in Castaic, appearing on the ballot as Proposition G; $2,542 in Newhall, ballot Proposition Z; $2,861 in Saugus, ballot Proposition FF, and $2,000 in Sulphur Springs, ballot Proposition HH. The Sulphur Springs district serves Canyon Country.