Road Tax Issue Won’t Be Ready for Nov. 7 Ballot

Backers of a tax initiative to raise money for road improvements in the Santa Clarita Valley said Thursday that they have lost their bid to place the measure on the Nov. 7 ballot.

Connie Worden, who heads a citizens committee that proposed the measure, said there was not enough time to refine the initiative’s complex legal language by Aug. 11, the deadline to qualify for the fall ballot. The measure would add from $75 to $200 to annual property-tax bills over 25 years.

“I am disappointed,” Worden said. “We’ve been working on this for 10 months, and we thought we were so close.”

To Seek Election

Proponents of the measure plan to ask the Santa Clarita City Council and Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to hold a special election on the measure in December, Worden said. The initiative would need a two-thirds vote for approval.

The tax is the brainchild of the Santa Clarita Valley Transportation Committee, an offshoot of the Santa Clarita Valley and Canyon Country chambers of commerce. Lou Garasi, a committee member, said the initiative could raise $41 million from present valley property owners by 2010. Another $115 million to $200 million would be raised from future valley residents.

Transportation planners have estimated that the Santa Clarita Valley will need $340 million to construct and upgrade streets and highways by 2010 to avoid gridlock in the fast-growing city of 140,000.

The tax would apply to most property within the William S. Hart Union High School District, which includes Santa Clarita and unincorporated portions of the valley. The tax would not apply to senior citizens, the tiny rural town of Val Verde and slivers of the city of Los Angeles that lie within the school district.

The Santa Clarita City Council, while not endorsing a call for new taxes, agreed to put the initiative before the voters. The Board of Supervisors had been scheduled Thursday to place the tax on the ballot.

But this week, Worden said, Santa Clarita and county officials determined that the measure could not be completed in time. “It was more technical than any of us realized,” she said.

Worden said tax attorneys told the transportation committee that the initiative, which would create a giant assessment district, was ambitious and unprecedented in California.

‘New Ground’

“We’re breaking new ground statewide,” Worden said. “It’s something that’s never been done in this magnitude.”

The transportation committee wants a special election in December to avoid the next municipal election in April, when council members Jo Anne Darcy, Dennis Koontz and Carl Boyer III face reelection. The committee does not want to put the incumbents, should they decide to run again, in the uncomfortable political situation of having to endorse or oppose a tax, Worden said.

Moreover, the valley’s five school districts have said they might place tax initiatives before voters in April. Competition could doom all proposed taxes to failure. “I think we’d probably end up hurting each other,” Worden said.

It would have cost the county and city about $100,000 to place the road tax on the November ballot, Garasi said. Holding a special election would cost about twice that amount, he said.