ROSSMOOR : Funds Budgeted for Park Bond Issue

More than 9% of the Rossmoor Community Services District budget for next year will pay to prepare a bond measure that, if approved by voters, would provide money to buy an elementary school site and make it a park.

The district approved its $1.28-million fiscal year 1990-91 budget at its meeting Wednesday night, earmarking $100,000 to hire consultants and prepare a bond measure for the June, 1991, ballot.

It is expected that two elementary school sites in Rossmoor--Rush Elementary School on Blume Drive and Hopkinson Elementary on Kensington Road--will be put up for sale by the Los Alamitos Unified School District soon, district General Manager Dan Stone said.

Both schools have been declared “surplus sites.” While Hopkinson is still operating as a school, the Rush site is being leased by a church, Stone said.

The law requires that 30% of the land on each site must be made available to other government agencies for 25% of its value, Stone said.

For example, if the Rush property were to become available, it is estimated the approximately 10-acre site would have a $10-million asking price, Board President Germaine Erskine said. The district then would be able to buy threeacres of the site for $750,000 and pay market price for the rest.

The bond measure, if approved by voters in the services district, would provide for the purchase of either site, but not both, Stone said.

“We haven’t decided which (site) would be the preferred one,” Stone said. “While Hopkinson is bigger and farther south, Rush is more centralized.”

The unincorporated community has one park, the 10-acre Rossmoor Park on Hedwig Road, with two mini-parks on Kempton Drive and Foster Road slated to open in November.

It will be the first election measure the community services district, founded in 1987, has ever prepared.

The district oversees the public recreation facilities and services, street lighting, median and parkway landscaping and street-sweeping services for Rossmoor’s 11,000-plus residents.

The major source of the district’s revenue is property taxes. The district has been able to build up a $500,000 reserve fund because the residential property in the district has steadily increased in value by about 2% annually, thus boosting the amount of property taxes paid, Stone said.