REGIONAL REPORT : School Districts Backing Away From Additional Property Fees : Taxes: Creation of special assessment districts under a 1972 state law has brought about widespread public outrage, prompting many boards to rescind their actions.

Jerry Sullivan never knew how hard it could be to vote yes until he found himself in a stuffy high school auditorium, face to face with 1,000 jeering protesters.

“They were almost maniacal,” said Sullivan, a trustee for the Huntington Beach Union High School District. “I had the feeling things might come flying, and I just hoped it wouldn’t be bullets. It was that tense.”

The setting was a public hearing July 25 on a controversial proposal to tack a $50-a-year fee onto property taxes in some parts of western Orange County to finance public school repairs. After voting unanimously to support the plan, the five trustees had to be escorted to their cars by security guards.

Last week, amid threats of lawsuits and recall campaigns, the trustees knuckled under to mounting political pressure. Weary and disillusioned, they reluctantly rescinded the fee--an increase that would have netted $4 million a year for financially distressed schools districts in Huntington Beach, Westminster, Fountain Valley and Midway City.

The Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District soon followed suit, voting 5 to 0 to reverse a $17-a-year assessment fee. At one point during the Friday meeting, the heckling was so loud that board President Judy Miner threatened to call the police to bring the crowd to order.

Across Southern California, public school districts reeling from sharp cuts in state funding are turning to a previously untapped resource: an obscure 1972 state law that allows public agencies to collect local assessment fees without voter approval for maintaining recreation facilities used by the public. From San Diego to Whittier, school officials have been scrambling this summer to form so-called maintenance assessment districts.

Since June, more than a dozen Southland school districts have drafted plans to charge homeowners an extra $13 to $50 a year to fix dilapidated tennis courts, faulty sprinkler systems and other maintenance problems. School administrators maintain that the money would help bolster educational programs that have suffered due to deep budget cutbacks.

The following school districts have already imposed property fees: Orange Unified, Whittier City, Whittier Union High, Bonita Unified in the San Gabriel Valley, and El Centro in Imperial County.

Those that attempted to levy property assessment fees but later abandoned their plans are: Huntington Beach Union High, Huntington Beach City, Ocean View, Westminster, Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified, Buena Park, La Habra City and Fullerton, all in Orange County, and Escondido Union High and Fallbrook High in San Diego County. The Burbank City Council is considering whether to impose the fees on behalf of the school district.

Yet instead of providing a quick fix, the assessment fees have touched a raw nerve among frustrated taxpayers, unleashing a Pandora’s box upon school administrators. Once heralded as an educator’s dream find, the Lighting and Landscape Act of 1972 is fast becoming the new rallying cry among conservative anti-tax forces.

“I found out about it and became enraged by the gall as to how they were going about this,” said Bryan Bridges, a Huntington Beach resident who helped organize a grass-roots campaign against the fees in that city. “People have been taxed as far as they choose to be and the line has been drawn,” said Bridges, a renter whose 12-year-old daughter attends private school but who says his vocal opposition is based on principle.

All but a handful of the Southern California districts have scuttled their plans in an effort to avoid the political fallout.

“It puts a lot of pressure on school districts if they want to use this vehicle for children,” said Lowell Shira, an assistant superintendent for the Whittier Union High School District, which recently approved a $20-a-year fee on single homes. “The vast majority of the people that came to our meeting were in opposition.”

That has also been true in other areas of Southern California where senior citizens, realtors and others have joined forces. Last month, disgruntled property owners turned out by the hundreds to speak against the proposed fees at marathon public hearings in Orange and San Diego counties. Waving signs and shouting, “See you in court!,” angry residents accused school officials of betraying the spirit of Proposition 13--the highly popular 1978 ballot initiative that requires two-thirds of the voters to approve a property tax increase.

In Burbank, the City Council instructed school district officials last week to come up with a better plan for how they would spend the money, then postponed a vote on a $13.70-a-year fee until next year.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig made his first public remarks on the subject last week, saying that while he supports the assessment fees, the ultimate decision should rest with the voters. Honig offered an apparent compromise solution to the controversy. Since a two-thirds majority vote is often difficult for schools to carry, he proposed that voter approval for the fees be based upon a simple majority. Anti-tax groups, however, are insisting that the standards of Proposition 13 prevail.

Meanwhile, the homeowner fees are under increasing attack. The Los Angeles-based Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. has filed a lawsuit against the Orange Unified School District in Orange County, charging that the $30-a-year homeowner fees would be unconstitutional.

Elected state officials have also jumped into the fray. State Sen. John R. Lewis (R-Orange) has introduced a bill that would prevent school districts from collecting the fees without the approval of two-thirds of the voters. Furthermore, Sen. Robert G. Beverly, (R-Redondo Beach), author of the Lighting and Landscape Act of 1972, has criticized schools for misusing the law.

“I think it’s a tortured use of the law,” said Beverly spokesman Tom Martin. “Does it fit the letter of the law? Probably. But does it fit the intent of the law? No.”

Beverly, then a member of the Assembly, first proposed the law 19 years ago to enable the city of Manhattan Beach to assess fees to pay for street lights. Since then, the Lighting and Landscape Act has been used primarily to raise money for repairing roads and maintaining public streets and parks.

But that changed several months ago when financial consultants around the state began holding a series of workshops advising school officials that they too could benefit from the law. Since the public contributes to the wear and tear on school recreation facilities, the consultants argued that school districts could levy fees to maintain the property.

Facing increasing enrollments and declining revenue, many districts were eager to try the seemingly innovative approach to raising money. More traditional methods, such as general obligation bond measures, are generally unreliable since two-thirds of the voters must approve.

Of 151 local bond initiatives placed before voters in local school districts since 1983, 55% have passed, according to California Department of Education figures. Since April, 1990, the approval rate has dropped to 45%.

Meanwhile, the public school population topped 4 million students in 1990--800,000 more than in 1985. State education officials predict that over the next five years, enrollments will grow at a rate of 250,000 students a year.

“I would have thought that the percentage of bonds passed would have gone up because most of these requests are for new facilities and more districts are becoming more crowded,” said Duwayne Brooks, assistant superintendent for school facilities in the state Department of Education. “But it could be that there are just more and more people attempting local general obligation bonds because the state doesn’t have any money to provide.”

School districts receive about 60% of their operating budgets from the state. However, budget cutbacks have been so severe that there is a $6-billion backlog in funding requests from local school districts, Brooks said.

Despite the difficulties, Orange Unified School District officials said they will continue to levy the property assessment fees.

“This assessment is new to schools, and I’m sure that’s why we’ve been challenged in the fashion that we have been,” said Frank Remkiewicz, director of planning for the district. “But our board is committed to the assessment districts, and we intend to defend our position.”

Both sides will be watching the outcome of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. lawsuit against Orange Unified closely, since the ruling could affect the future of assessment fees statewide.

The organization, a self-described watchdog group, is asking the court to prevent school officials from creating future districts without a two-thirds vote. The legal challenge also asks the court to block Orange Unified from collecting any fees until the matter is resolved.