The Spirit of Los Alamitos

Voters have been reluctant in recent years to approve bond measures for school facilities. Today’s pervasive anti-tax sentiment makes it even more difficult to get such a proposal passed. But what happened in the Los Alamitos Unified School District in Orange County last week is an instructional tale in building consensus at the grass-roots level for infrastructure improvements.

Six district schools built decades ago to educate baby boomers had fallen in need of overhaul on everything from plumbing and electrical systems to leaking roofs. Many of the people who originally paid for those schools are now retired and were not likely to be a sympathetic constituency for new school taxes once their children had grown. But undaunted by the failure of seven of 10 school bond measures in Orange County during the past decade, backers began with survey research to identify what voters were willing to accept. They enlisted the support of the parents of today’s schoolchildren, while basically releasing from tax obligation property owners 65 and older.

By the way, such exemptions have not always guaranteed the success of bond measures elsewhere. Proponents of the Los Alamitos proposal, Measure K, clinched their deal through hard work at the neighborhood level, getting 70.9% of the vote. They targeted and educated likely voters as if they were making the case to a homeowner well-advised to make repairs to keep up the value of a house. And this well-organized education campaign worked on the toughest of turf in the 1990s, the voters’ pocketbook: Voters agreed to tax themselves an average of an additional $4.50 a month for the next 25 years to pay for the repairs.

Here’s an object lesson that when a strong case is made, voters can be persuaded to go along with tax increases. Just call it the Spirit of Los Alamitos.