College District Tax Levy Plan Apparently Unravels

A plan under consideration by the Los Angeles Community College District to increase property taxes without voter approval--condemned by critics as an end run around Proposition 13 restrictions--appeared to have unraveled Monday.

Elizabeth Garfield, a member of the district Board of Trustees who voted last week to explore the proposal, announced that she will oppose it--leaving the board without a majority in favor of the controversial plan.

“I am not in favor of it. That’s the bottom line,” Garfield said in an interview Monday with The Times. “If the voters voted in favor of Proposition 13, we as a governing board should support that.”

Relying on an obscure state statute intended to fund municipal landscaping and lighting projects, college officials had proposed raising $8.9 million a year by imposing a small annual tax assessment--amounting to about $4 per year on a single-family home--on the 1 million privately owned parcels in the 882-square-mile district.

Under state law, the assessment revenues could be used only for outdoor maintenance and improvements, including recreational projects. But by using about half the money to replace funds the district already spends for such purposes, officials could free up money to add more than 1,000 new classes throughout the nine-college system.

Last Wednesday, Garfield was part of a 4-2 board majority that voted to hire a consultant to begin crafting a tax plan, although she said then that she had not decided whether to support a tax hike.

On Monday, Garfield confirmed that she now intends to vote against the plan when the board takes up the issue again on June 14.

The trustees who opposed the plan last week, Lindsay Conner and Althea Baker, said Monday they will again vote against it, which would leave the board deadlocked at 3 to 3 in its formal vote.

“It appears to be dead on arrival,” Baker said.

Under court rulings, the type of assessment the district proposed would have been exempt from the Proposition 13 requirement that two-thirds of voters must approve property tax increases. But tax foes nonetheless accused the district of violating the spirit of the 1978 measure.

District officials said the board needs to formally initiate the assessment district at its June 14 meeting in order to impose the assessments in time for residents’ December property tax bills.

The plan might be revived in the future, because the seventh seat on the trustees’ board is vacant. It will be filled today in an election pitting professor Gloria Romero against businessman David Kessler, but the winner will not take office until late July, which would delay implementation of any tax increase until next year.