Tax Proposal Fails, City’s Public Pool May Close : Santa Paula: High school trustees vote down levy that would have kept only community swim facility operating.

Reluctant to tax residents for repairing the city’s only public swimming pool and other recreation facilities, Santa Paula Union High School trustees Wednesday rejected a proposal that could have added as much as $50 a year to city tax bills.

Arguing a new levy would be unfair to the community, the board voted 3 to 2 against creating a special assessment tax district that would have provided revenue to fix and maintain facilities used by the general public.

Without the needed funding, the pool is expected to close May 15 and be filled with sand.

“I feel we have not pursued all the options, and I can’t support this tax,” Trustee Shirley Hendren said. “I feel that the community should have a say on the issue, and they should vote on it.”

Hendren, along with trustees Al Sandoval and Terry Nelson, voted against the levy. Board members Bob Gonzales and Roylene Cunningham supported the measure.

“Tonight, I need to do what I think is right for the kids and for the community as a whole,” Gonzales said. “If we don’t do something for them today, we will lose tomorrow. They will suffer. We will suffer.”

Several parents questioned what the high school swim team and its 32 members would do without the pool. “I am really disappointed that the community is not behind the high school,” said Jo Ann Kirk, who has a child on the team. “I don’t understand that they can be this shortsighted.”

But about half a dozen residents spoke out against the proposed levy at Wednesday’s meeting.

“This tax will especially hit hard on senior citizens, who are on a fixed income,” said Phyllis Stamm of the Hillville Estates Homeowners Assn. “At this time of economic depression, we can not overburden taxpayers.”

Stamm came armed with 110 signatures of residents opposing the tax plan.

A little-known state law allows the school district to impose the special tax, specifically for recreation projects, without approval from the voters. But board members inevitably face voter scrutiny at their next election.

The school district has considered closing the pool permanently since last year, when the city refused to rent the pool from the district.

Since then, pool boosters held several fund-raisers and managed to raise $7,000 to keep the pool from closing. They needed, however, to have raised at least $12,000, Kirk said.

Funds raised by the proposed assessment would have provided the district with $30,000 each year to keep the pool free of algae and to pay for repairs to other district facilities, including a leak at one of the high school’s two gymnasiums.

The tax would have affected about 8,100 homeowners in Santa Paula and outlying areas who lie within the school district boundaries. That includes all of incorporated Santa Paula and extends east and west of the city about four miles, north to eastern Ojai and south to South Mountain, said Tahir Ahad, the district’s business director.

Times correspondent Catherine Saillant contributed to this story.