Voters OK Bonds to Upgrade Schools : Education: Los Alamitos’ bid for a $13-million issue wins by a more than 2-1 margin and surprises many in an era of anti-taxation sentiment.

Running a skillful campaign, a grass-roots organization overcame opposition to tax increases and persuaded local voters to approve a $13-million bond measure for schools, Los Alamitos Unified School District officials said Wednesday.

Even more surprising, Measure K in Tuesday’s election was approved by a 7-3 margin in a school district where only 25% of the residents have school-age children, state education officials said. The measure, which needed a two-thirds majority to pass, received 70.9% of the votes.

Ronald Murrey, the school district’s director of business and support services, said that Measure K’s supporters were able to get across the message to voters that the schools would have to be rejuvenated “much like your home needs repairs after 30 years.” The average age of the district’s seven schools is 29 years.

“They were willing to tax themselves,” Murrey said. “They would like to see their schools in the same condition they were 30 years ago.”

Schools targeted for repairs are Hopkinson, McGaugh and Rossmoor elementaries and McAuliffe Middle School and Los Alamitos and Laurel Continuation high schools. The schools range in age from 25 to 40 years.

When the Los Alamitos school board decided to put Measure K on the ballot, it voted to use a state provision that allows school officials to exempt certain areas within their districts from voting on bond issues or having their taxes raised. In this case, residents from Leisure World of Seal Beach were excluded from the district election.

In addition, school district officials decided to provide exemptions for those property owners age 65 and older from paying the new tax. Those residents, however, have to file for exemptions each year.

“That helped us,” said Donna Artukovic, a school board member and campaign coordinator for Measure K. “We had many senior citizens on a fixed income.”

Applying such provisions to school bond measures, however, hasn’t guaranteed success. Of the 21 similar school bond elections in the state since 1983, voters approved only four, said David Walrath, a legislative advocate for the Coalition for Adequate School Housing, based in Sacramento.

Walrath added that most of those elections were for bonds to build new schools or expand older schools. In May, 1989, voters in the fast-growing Capistrano Unified School District defeated a ballot measure to raise property taxes for new school construction.

In fact, school bond measures have failed in general in Orange County in the past 10 years. Of the seven school bond measures held since 1980, only three have passed, according to the Orange County registrar of voters.

Measure K will raise taxes on property within the school district by an average of $4.50 a month for the next 25 years, the amount of time needed to retire the bond debt. The money will be used to repair and rehabilitate all six schools in the district, which spans Los Alamitos, Seal Beach and a small part of Cypress.

District officials attributed the success of the initiative to a strong grass-roots campaign and to a report that identified specific improvements needed at the schools.

The repairs will involve electrical systems, leaking roofs, asbestos removal, heating and air-conditioning systems, plumbing and general rehabilitation. The school repairs are scheduled to be made over the next 15 to 20 years.

Money to cover the cost of renovating schools has been a growing problem for schools in the state. Many districts have had to look to new solutions, such as bond elections, to find the financing, rather than taking money from a general fund at the expense of instruction costs, Walrath said. He estimated the cost of deferred maintenance for schools statewide at $1 billion.

“The biggest problem is this: Only 20% of the households have children in schools, and only 50% go to the polls,” said Gary Jerome, an education consultant to state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach). “That makes it very difficult to get a two-thirds majority.”

The reasons for defeat, education experts said, can vary. But Jerome said much depends on how organized a campaign is and how well they convey to voters the need for the bonds.

“The best campaigns are the ones that really enlist parents,” Jerome said. “By and large, school districts run lousy campaigns.”

Artukovic said that in the Los Alamitos district, members of her committee conducted a survey before the election that helped tell the board what voters were willing to accept. The costs of repairing the schools were targeted at $26 million, but the school board trimmed that to $13 million after getting the results of the survey, Artukovic said.

She also said that there was no organized opposition to the initiative.