Buena Park Colonists Win a Skirmish in Taxing Times

It was a muttering, murmuring crowd--the kind you see at a prizefight--with undercurrents of pent-up unease and suspicion. Conspiracy theories abounded. The fix was in, and everybody knew it. If anybody was going to get socked on this night, it was the crowd.

“They’re going to pass this, you know,” one man said under his breath. “They decided that before the meeting.”

But still they filed into the meeting room of the Buena Park School District on Monday night, perhaps eager to see how the school board was going to finesse this one.

The public hearing was to precede the board’s vote on setting up a revenue-raising district under an obscure 1972 law known as the Lighting and Landscaping Act. In the case of Buena Park, the assessment would be $24 a year for single-family homes and be used largely to upgrade the district’s recreational facilities.

Last month, the Orange Unified School District withstood long and loud protests at a public hearing and enacted the same measure. So, Buena Park residents had heard about this show before. And in the weeks ahead, it may well be playing in a school board venue near you, as several other Orange County school districts have announced similar plans.

“I’d like to accuse this board of subterfuge and a hidden agenda,” one man said. Hearing no dissent, he proceeded to do just that. The assessment, he said, would just be the starting point--a base onto which future increases would be built.

And that was pretty much how the drama played out, a modern-day colonists’ uprising against a Tea Tax. Most despicable, they suggested, was that it represented an end run against the revered Proposition 13, whose hallowed name was invoked as often Monday night as that of God Almighty at a revival meeting.

It made no difference when the other side argued that schools need money, that recreation and textbooks are all part of the public education package that people have to pay for.

“Why isn’t this being put on the ballot?” one man said. “We’re being nickel-and-dimed,” a woman said. “At what point do the taxpayers revolt?” another man asked.

All in all, the confrontation in the Buena Park board room was quite mild as these things go. You might have left thinking, what’s the big deal?

No, it wasn’t exciting unless, like most people, you’re fascinated with the prospect of seeing into the future.

Because that’s what it was: local officials trying to persuade mistrustful constituents that they really and truly have run out of money.

“I think what you saw was a report from the front lines of what is the increasingly distressing economic and political background in the last part of the 20th Century,” said Peter Detwiler, a consultant to the state Senate’s Local Government Committee. “Reagan’s federalism delegated to the states new spending responsibilities, but without revenues, on the argument that states are free to raise revenues. And we (the state) have done much the same to counties and schools.”

Detwiler is right on the money. These fights are going to break out everywhere, as they have sporadically ever since Proposition 13 passed. How are you going to convince a balky, suspicious public that it costs money to support schools and health care and roads and criminal justice?

As Detwiler pointed out, local officials face the daunting task of asking their constituents for money--the same constituents who have said no to more money for Sacramento or Washington.

Not an easy task.

Oh, I almost forgot: Time to announce the decision from the Monday Night Fights Live From Buena Park.

The board voted 5-0 not to impose the tax. The fix wasn’t in, after all.

Some board members even sounded a bit chagrined about the campaign surrounding the Lighting and Landscaping Act. Board member Charles M. Menzies even conceded that he didn’t necessarily disagree with the charges that the district was end-running Proposition 13.

“But it’s not because we’re deceitful,” he said. “It’s because we’re not getting the money we need in this district.”

So, chalk one up for the colonists. This was one fight they had expected to lose.

“Hey, you won,” I said to one of them as he was leaving.

“For now,” he said. “But it’s just a postponement, probably.”

How right he is. In other words, start booking the rematch.

The fight between Declining Revenues and Demand for Services has just begun to heat up.