Property Tax Hike Proposed : Education: Critics protest as the L.A. community college board studies a way used by some other agencies to circumvent Prop. 13 limits.

In a move that critics protested as an attempt to evade Proposition 13 limits on tax increases, the Los Angeles Community College District is proposing an unusual tax hike on nearly one million properties that an obscure provision of state law empowers the district to impose without a public vote.

Relying on a statute intended to fund services such as landscaping and lighting, college officials are considering a plan to raise $8.9 million a year by charging property owners $4 per single-family residence, $16 per commercial parcel and $17 per multifamily parcel within the 882-square-mile district.

If enacted, officials said the Los Angeles district would become the first of California’s 71 community college districts to impose the levy known as a special assessment. Some elementary and high school districts, however, have enacted such assessments in recent years, often amid public uproar and even lawsuits.

“It’s an effort to shove a property tax hike down people’s throats without their ability to vote on it,” contended Lindsay Conner, a member of the college district board of trustees. Conner opposes the plan, along with tax foes such as the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., founded by the co-author of tax-cutting Proposition 13.

The proposition, passed by a large margin in 1978, was aimed at preventing property tax increases without the approval of the electorate.

But other LACCD officials and trustees called the proposal an entirely legal method of raising money for the cash-strapped, nine-campus district, the nation’s largest.

“It’s a way of obtaining funds to maintain and improve our campuses. They’re falling apart,” Trustee David Lopez-Lee countered.

The district’s board of trustees is scheduled to decide June 14 whether to formally pursue the proposal, which the board itself could enact after mailing a notice to all affected property owners and holding two public hearings. The levies could show up on owners’ property tax bills due in December.

District Chancellor Neil Yoneji, who brought the proposal to the district’s board Wednesday night, said the additional revenue would permit about a 10% increase in district class offerings, improved maintenance at the colleges and up to $46 million in new capital projects around the district.

Legally, the assessment revenue can only be used for facility maintenance, landscaping and related improvements. But by freeing the $3 million to $4 million of general funds the district now spends for those purposes, those funds could then be used to supplement class offerings.

That sleight-of-hand with the funds--imposing a levy for maintenance and facility purposes but ultimately using about half of the amount in the classroom--could prove particularly controversial. Conner, for instance, called it “wrong in principle and possibly challengeable in law.”

Across the state, officials said a variety of public agencies lately have been showing increased interest in the assessments permitted under the state’s 1972 Landscaping and Lighting Assessment Act--one of the few ways remaining to public agencies, under Proposition 13, to raise levies on property without direct voter approval.

Joel Fox, president of the Los Angeles-based Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., said a reason for the increased interest may be because his group soon plans to begin gathering signatures for a 1996 state ballot initiative that would eliminate that option by requiring future such assessments to receive two-thirds voter approval.

“We’ve been getting a lot of calls from people around the state” reporting similar proposals, Fox said. And he added of the LACCD proposal: “We don’t think the landscape and lighting districts were meant for school districts. We think the system is being abused.”

Before Proposition 13 passed, public agencies such as the LACCD could annually set their own property tax rates sufficient to meet their needs. But the landmark ballot measure imposed a basic 1% tax rate and limited increases in property valuations. The measure required that special tax increases must obtain two-thirds voter approval.

But after Proposition 13, cities and other public agencies’ use of landscape and lighting assessments--passed by the Legislature in 1972 to allow the city of Manhattan Beach to assess fees for street lights--grew substantially. It was not until 1991, however, that school officials realized they also could make use of the exception.

In fact, Los Angeles county officials said there are at least 180 such “landscape and lighting” districts around the county, but only eight sponsored by school districts. School districts that have them--including Torrance, Claremont, Alhambra and several in the Whittier area--used them to raise $6.3 million in 1994-95.

Although the state Supreme Court and lower courts have ruled that schools can use the assessments and they are not subject to two-thirds voter approval, public opposition and a lawsuit by the Jarvis group forced a group of Orange County school districts to abandon their assessments four years ago.

The law provides that such a levy can be blocked only if more than half of the affected property owners file written objections--which in the case of the community college district would require action by more than 480,000 property owners.

The levies proposed by the 101,000-student Los Angeles Community College district would impact virtually every private property owner within its area, which stretches from Sylmar in the north to San Pedro in the south, and includes most of the metropolitan Los Angeles area.

The assessments would hit the owners of about 43% of the parcels in the county, or about 961,576 out of 2.24 million total parcels. The fees would show up on owners’ county property tax bills, and the district is proposing to continue the assessments for at least 20 to 30 years.

That is because district officials are proposing to spend about half of the annual proposed revenue to support the debt service on long-term bonds that would pay for the $46 million in proposed capital projects at the district’s largely aged and dilapidated campuses.

At its meeting Wednesday night, the district’s Board of Trustees voted 4 to 2 to hire a consultant to prepare the initial paperwork for the assessment plan. District officials said the preparatory work by the Newport Beach-based David Taussig and Associates Inc., could cost more than $50,000.

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Los Angeles Community College District

Using an obscure provision of state law, the Los Angeles Community College District is proposing an unusual tax increase for property owners within its boundaries.