Don’t Rip Off Schools, Cities in Plan B

* Some people have offered a Plan B for solving the Orange County bankruptcy. Specifically, the idea is to take property tax from schools and sales tax from cities to keep the county afloat. Additionally, cities and school districts would “forgive” the county debt. Thus, to keep the county afloat, our school district would be expected to “‘donate” our property tax and forgive the debt the county owes us. Further, as a taxpayer and property owner in Anaheim, my city would suffer a loss of sales tax, which would translate into a direct loss of service to my community.

This is completely insane. About 85% of the services that government provides and people really care about are provided by cities and school districts. The rest are by county, state and federal government. So, it makes no sense whatsoever to reduce services people care about to maintain services that are less important to them.

I happen to have been a supporter of Measure R. I voted for it, but it lost, and that is the way it is. The County of Orange has assembled a great staff. They have suffered and will continue to suffer, but it is stupid beyond belief to try to solve the problem of the county by putting schools into bankruptcy and causing cities to cut services or raise taxes and fees.

If this is the best the county hired guns (read bankruptcy attorney staff) and our state elected leaders can come up with, then maybe it really is time for a change.

As one elected leader (and I speak for myself and not my peers in this matter), I will never vote to support “stealing” from successful local efforts at schools and cities to bail out the county. The State of California has done this the last several years trying to solve its fiscal mess. No doubt that’s where Mr. [Bruce] Bennett [the county’s bankruptcy lawyer] and his associates got the idea.

Measure R should have been adopted, but it was not. The supervisors need to solve the problem, pay their debts, not try and bankrupt cities and school districts. If they need more time to pay their debts to the Magnolia School District, then that might just fly. If they want to “stiff us” or steal from our funding sources to pay us back, that is not going to work. I cannot envision a circumstance when our board of trustees, with its focus on the kids in our community, would ever let that happen.

Get back to work, Mr. Bennett, and find something that makes sense. We all know your client is the county and you are making every decision to support your client, but we live here, we work here, our lives are here, and your proposal is not in the best interest of the community.

STEVEN STAVELEY

Board member

Magnolia School District

Orange County’s financial advisers who came up with Plan B as reported in your July 19 article need a civics lesson. Orange County cities are independent political subdivisions of the State of California, not of Orange County.

Turning these cities, and special districts, into beggars might make the Board of Supervisors look good, but it does not seem like a realistic plan to pay off hundreds of millions of dollars of debt coming due in less than a year. Looting others’ bank accounts is not the way for Orange County to pay its financial obligations.

NEIL M. JORDAN

Irvine