College District Revives Property Tax Hike Plan : Education: Latest proposal would increase homeowners’ bills by about $8 a year to fund campus improvements. Critics say it violates spirit of Proposition 13.

Four months after shelving one controversial tax plan, the trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District will consider a new proposal this week to add about $8 a year to homeowner property tax bills to finance improvements at the system’s nine campuses.

District trustees are scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to begin the process to enact the tax, which would affect about 1 million properties, but would not require voter approval. Critics say the move violates the spirit of Proposition 13, which requires two-thirds voter approval for most property tax increases.

Under the plan being presented to the board, commercial property owners in the district would pay $32 in new taxes annually and apartment owners would be charged an additional $34.32. The 882-square-mile community college district stretches from Sylmar to San Pedro and covers about 45% of the 2.24 million parcels in the county.

A 1992 California Supreme Court ruling allowed public agencies to impose new property taxes without voter approval under the state’s Landscaping and Lighting Act. Citizens can block the tax if more than half of all affected property owners file written protests, in this case, to the community college district.

Using this obscure law, the college district would raise an extra $18 million a year. Most of this money would be used to finance up to $127 million in bonds to pay for campus facility upgrades, including a $6-million equine center at Pierce College in Woodland Hills and a $10-million fitness center at Mission College in Sylmar.

In addition to funding new projects, the influx of tax dollars would help defray the cost of outdoor maintenance and landscaping work. This would free between $3 million and $4 million in the district’s General Fund, allowing trustees to add hundreds of courses. The tax money cannot be used directly to hire teachers or build classrooms.

“Our campuses are in dire need. If anyone visits our campuses, they’re in shambles,” said board of trustees President David Lopez-Lee, the sponsor of the new tax proposal. On Friday, Lopez-Lee said he was “about 95% confident” that he had mustered a four-vote board majority to proceed.

In June, Chancellor Neil Yoneji withdrew his previous $4-per-house proposal after the trustees appeared to be in a 3-3 deadlock. But the concept gained new life in July when newly elected Trustee Gloria Romero, a Cal State Los Angeles professor, filled the board’s vacant seventh seat and announced she would consider the plan.

Before they would settle on the exact amount of the tax, however, the district plan calls for surveying local residents to gauge their level of support. Residents will be queried about tax increases both above and below the $8 proposal, said Lopez-Lee.

He added that he would not support any new tax unless it is supported by at least a majority of those contacted in the telephone survey. Trustees recently had discussed holding an advisory election, but dropped that idea because of the estimated $2-million cost.

Meanwhile, Trustee Lindsay Conner, who led the fight against the prior tax proposal, said he will do so again. Conner and other critics call it an evasion of Proposition 13 tax limits that is “inappropriate at best, and illegal at worst.”

“We need the money, but you have to raise money in a way that is legal and appropriate,” Conner said. “You can’t let the ends justify the means.”

District officials said their plan is legal, and that courts, including the state Supreme Court, have upheld similar taxes levied by other public agencies.

Calling that approach a loophole to the intent of Proposition 13, tax foes led by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. are seeking an initiative for the November, 1996, state ballot that would require voter or property owner approval of all such future proposals and some existing ones.

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