School Tax Plan Files Out After Brief Return

The Palos Verdes Peninsula School Board this week briefly revived a proposal for a special property tax to help solve the schools’ financial problems, then consigned the idea to limbo again.

Several trustees said they concluded, after a workshop discussion Monday night, that the proposal has less chance with the voters now than it did a year ago, when a similar measure narrowly failed at the polls. But they said the board will continue public discussions of the proposal at a meeting in July.

In March, 1987, nearly 62% of the voters favored an annual $100 tax on each parcel of property on the peninsula for five years, but the measure failed because a two-thirds vote is required to impose new taxes.

“I think the majority (at the workshop) felt it would be very difficult to rally support for a parcel tax because of basic divisions in the community,” said board President Marlys J. Kinnel. “Experience in other school districts shows that such measures must have the support of a highly unified community in order to win.”

Much of the current division stems from the board’s decision last November to save money by closing Miraleste High School on the east side of the peninsula, a move that sparked an effort by a group of Miraleste parents to break away and set up an independent school system. To gain time for the secession effort, the group obtained a court order that will require the district to keep Miraleste open next fall.

Trustee Jeffrey N. Younggren said a number of residents active in the East Peninsula Education Council proposed reviving the parcel tax as a way to save Miraleste.

He said he could support those parents’ desire for a referendum, if the group paid the $30,000 to $40,000 estimated to be cost of the election.

However, Younggren agreed with other board members that a parcel tax stands little chance with the voters at this juncture. “There are too many uncertainties,” he said. “We can’t even tell people how the money would be spent or who would get it if the east side secedes.”

Younggren said a number of people at the workshop also opposed using parcel-tax money to subsidize the Miraleste campus, which is the smallest of the 9,800-student district’s three high schools. “At best, the parcel tax is a short-term solution,” he said. After the new tax money ran out in four or five years, he said, the district would still face the need to consolidate because of declining enrollment.

Ted Gibbs, a spokesman for the east peninsula group, said the real need in the future will be to find enough classroom space for a growing student population, especially if the district continues to abandon its schools. He said the group’s demographers project dramatic increases in enrollment at the kindergarten and grade-school levels, a trend that he said will reach the junior and senior high levels in a few years.

According to district projections, enrollment will continue to decline for several years before it stabilizes.