Commentary : Taking Sides on Irvine Park Bond : No: The park bond will necessitate massive--and inequitable--tax increases.

On March 6, 1990, the voters of Irvine will be asked to approve a $57.5-million park bond called Proposition Parks. This bond is a taxpayer rip-off!

Using $60,000 of taxpayer money, the Irvine City Council has called a special election with the hope of a low voter turnout and an outcome that could be controlled by special-interest groups.

Since every property owner will be responsible for repaying the debt service created by this bond, I consider it an abuse of the democratic process for our local politicians to purposely avoid putting this issue on the general election ballot in June, when voter turnout is much higher.

To further compound this abuse, they have spent $29,000 of the special-election monies to mail a pro-Proposition Parks brochure to every voter in Irvine. For locally elected officials to use current taxpayer revenues to lobby for further tax increases is just unacceptable.

Proposition Parks will cost Irvine taxpayers $304 million over the next 20 years--$106 million to pay for capital improvements and an additional $198 million to pay for the maintenance and operation of the facilities that it funds. So Proposition Parks is really a $106-million park bond and a $198-million tax increase.

I don’t have a problem with bond issuance as a legitimate vehicle for cities to finance projects that can be maintained out of general-fund revenues and are of urgent need. Unfortunately, Proposition Parks meets neither of these requirements. Consider, for example, the “urgency” of some of the projects that it would fund: $14.1 million to build a park next to our lavish $38.6-million Civic Center, $1.5 million to landscape an Edison easement, $600,000 to create a model farm and $100,000 for art in unexpected places.

As a member of the Irvine Finance Commission, I reviewed the formation of this bond package and voted against the final version because I felt that by funding the maintenance and operation of all the projects through an enormous assessment district, the mayor and the City Council could successfully circumvent the Gann Spending Limitation that was supported overwhelmingly by the voters of Irvine. I also realized that because Proposition Parks taxes us an additional $10 million a year ad infinitum to maintain the facilities it creates, the monies that normally would be allocated for these purposes would remain in the general fund and would be available for the City Council to spend as it wishes. Considering the current council’s penchant for global engineering, giving its members millions of dollars a year to spend as they wish is indeed a scary thought!

For months now, I have heard our locally elected officials broadcast their desire to end discrimination in Irvine and to encourage “inclusion” through the provision of affordable housing for the less affluent. How then do they justify a bond-financing program that doubles our city property taxes and discriminates against senior citizens?

Do they honestly think that single-parent property owners, dependent on affordable housing to remain in Irvine, will support a tax increase of $120 per year plus 2% per year for the next 20 years?

And what about those on fixed incomes? In a blatant effort to solicit senior-citizen support, the City Council voted unanimously to reduce the assessment in the mobile-home parks where many of the seniors live and where voter turnout is traditionally very high. What this does, of course, is discriminate against those seniors who don’t live in mobile homes and cause them to pay two times more than their counterparts in the Groves and the Meadows.

To further magnify the inequity of this “park bond,” the mayor and council have assessed the business community more than 10 times the amount of the residential assessment.

There is no question that businesses should pay their fair share of taxes, but I am convinced that if Proposition Parks passes in its current structure, businesses will pass on those costs to the consumer. Not only will we get to pay for the park bond through increased property taxes, but we will pay for it again through increased prices for goods and services.

Proposition Parks is simply too comprehensive in its scope and far too expensive in its cost.

Let me conclude by stating that there are projects in this bond that do have merit, and I would support a more conservative approach to financing them, like the bond package of 1974. That bond funded capital-improvement projects that could be maintained out of general-fund revenues without raising taxes.

That is exactly what we need again. We don’t need Proposition Parks.

I urge you to vote NO on Proposition Parks. Tell our local politicians to give us a legitimate park bond and not a world-class tax increase.