Parcel Tax for Schools Loses--Again : Education: The measure gets a big majority, but not the two-thirds vote it needed for passage.

The third time was not a charm for the ill-fated Beverly Hills parcel tax.

The tax measure on Tuesday’s municipal ballot garnered 63.3% of the vote, short of the two-thirds needed for passage. According to the semi-official returns, 4,577 votes for the tax had been counted, and of which 2,653 votes were against the measure, Proposition A, making it 243 votes short of passage.

A number of absentee ballots remain to be tallied during a canvass, which begins today and may be finished within a couple of weeks, according to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder. But even tax supporters say they doubt the uncounted ballots will change the outcome.

With the recession and newspaper headlines screaming of possible state and federal tax increases, “I think people had to vote their pocketbook,” said Judie Fenton, co-coordinator of the pro-tax Yes on Schools Committee.

The tax, $250 to $750 per parcel, would have brought $4.3 million annually to the Beverly Hills Unified School District. One prior parcel-tax measure for the district lost last June--by four votes--and one lost in 1987.

“Last time’s a tragedy. This time’s a statement,” said Fenton, who is married to school board member Frank Fenton. “It tells you timing is everything.”

Beverly Hills Mayor Vicki Reynolds and City Council members, who played a leading role in the campaign, agreed.

“If people had any doubts at all about the merits of the parcel tax, then the recession just pushed them toward a no vote,” Reynolds said. “Taxes are just an anathema to so many people. And when you need to get two-thirds of the vote, it just makes it that much more difficult.”

Other proponents of the tax were still in disbelief over its failure. “I can understand somebody in this economy, teetering on the line, when every dollar is important, but for condos, $250--I mean really, that’s not even a dress today,” school board President Betty Wilson said Wednesday. “That’s not even 1% of the worth of their condos.”

The tax would have been levied for five years. Parcels of land in the city would have been assessed between $250 and $750 annually, depending on their size and use.

But anti-tax leader Sherman Kulick, who argued that the district was fiscally irresponsible, said the measure’s defeat “was a foregone conclusion.”

“This election should’ve never occurred,” said Kulick, chairman of the Citizens for Cost-Effective Quality Education. He added that the recession was in full swing in January, when the school board approved putting the tax measure on the ballot.

City Councilman Robert K. Tanenbaum, chairman of the Yes committee, who spent Tuesday phoning supporters and arranging rides to the polls, said he had expected the tax measure to win. “Everybody worked as hard as they could,” he said. “Those who voted against have to live with (the fact) that they helped hurt education in Beverly Hills. And if they’re satisfied with that, there’s nothing I can do for them.”

After the failure of last year’s tax, the district laid off 41 teachers and dozens of other employees and slashed expenses by $2.5 million to bring this year’s budget to $28.6 million. Physical education, music and art specialists were cut, and elementary school teachers rarely have a recess or lunchtime when they’re not counseling or tutoring students, they say.

“There isn’t anything more they can take away, practically,” said Irene Easton, a third-grade teacher at Horace Mann School, who worked on the Yes committee campaign. “I just shudder to think what else could happen.”

District officials project a $1.26-million deficit for the 1991-92 school year. Supt. Sol Levine said this year’s tax would have spared the district from laying off 11 more teachers and 21 other employees, and would have allowed it to hire about 25 additional teachers.

But Levine acknowledged that the tax would have given the district only five years’ breathing room “to deal with the shortfall of money and see if there’s a turnaround with the state funding.”

Board President Wilson said the district will look into reorganizing employees. “We will survive,” she said. “We have to meet (the community’s) expectations, and those expectations are for a quality education program.”

Opponents of the measure charged that the district budget should be overhauled. They note that Beverly Hills spends almost $6,000 per student annually, more than any other unified district in Los Angeles County, but that pupils in other districts score better on standardized tests.

“It’s always easier to write out a check and think it’s a solution,” said Jack Cohen, a lawyer and a 1978 graduate of Beverly Hills High School, who said his work on the anti-tax campaign was “my way of giving something back” to the system. He said that the district should examine drumming up volunteers and parents to help in the classroom, applying for grants and increasing partnerships with business.

The school board, he said, lacks what he called “strong, creative leadership.”

Finances are sure to play a leading role in the November school board election, when three board seats will be open. Member Fenton already has announced that he will not seek another term.

Kulick said the parcel tax elections show that his organization can sway the board race. The tax’s proponents “forced us to become a viable political organization in this city. If there hadn’t been the third tax proposal coming so shortly after their prior defeat, we wouldn’t have been able to organize as effectively as we did. They didn’t let us relax,” he said.

“We can elect a school board, we can elect a City Council,” he said.

Kulick claimed a double victory because supporters of the tax also dropped a lawsuit challenging the narrow failure of last year’s measure, to reassure voters that they could not be taxed twice. The anti-tax campaign contended that if this year’s measure had won and the lawsuit had prevailed, property owners would be taxed doubly, a charge that school district officials denied.

“We forced them to drop the lawsuit, so it eliminated any possibility of the 1990 tax being put up,” Kulick said.

Opponents of the tax spent about $3,000, Kulick said. They distributed or mailed about 20,000 flyers, said co-chairwoman Julia Donzis.

Two flyers opposing the tax and left at doorsteps in the last few days of the campaign caused a bit of controversy. One was from a group calling itself “Parents for Better Education.” The other, with pictures, implied that an elderly woman with a walker would bear the brunt of the tax while the owners of a mansion and a Rolls Royce would reap the benefits. It is not known who sent out the flyers. Kulick said he had no knowledge of them or connection to them.

But Judie Fenton, calling the anonymous flyers “sleaze,” said they “did not cost us the election.”

“Our community is too smart for that. The economy cost us the election.”

The Yes committee spent about $60,000 on the campaign and enjoyed the endorsement of not only the City Council but the Chamber of Commerce, Real Estate Board, the teachers, police and firefighters unions and the Concern for Tenants Rights group.

Beverly Hills is one of only a few districts that have tried more than twice to pass a school parcel tax. San Marino Unified School District also tried for the third time to pass a parcel tax Tuesday--and the proposal, to levy $100 per parcel, won with 83.1% of the vote.

Statewide, school parcel tax elections have had a 38% success rate.

Some Beverly Hills supporters of the tax say a round four is not inconceivable. “Try it again, in a year or two. Sure, why not? “ board member Fenton said. “If we got ripped, (with only) 35% of the vote . . . we’d never try it again.”

But Councilman Allan Alexander said he thought “another try for the parcel tax would be inappropriate.” But, he added, “I have no regrets about the support the City Council gave to support the parcel tax.”

“All of our people simply did not get out and vote,” Tanenbaum said. “Still, 63% of the vote is a landslide in any election except this one.”

Staff writer Ken Garcia contributed to this report.

BEVERLY HILLS

Beverly Hills Unified School District

Proposition A--Parcel tax *

17 of 17 Precincts Reporting

ISSUE VOTE % Yes 4,577 63.30 No 2,653 36.69