College Tax Approved for Ballot

Bowing to public pressure, Los Angeles Community College District trustees voted Friday to suspend a controversial tax on 1 million properties set to take effect this year and to instead put the issue before voters in a November election.

The 5-0 vote by the district’s Board of Trustees reversed a yearlong plan to levy the tax--which would include a $12-a-year assessment for every homeowner--without voters’ approval. The board vote was taken during a special meeting on the last possible day to call for an election and as angry residents prepared to launch recall efforts against trustees who supported the tax.

“What today’s vote does ensure is the people themselves will decide whether to pass this in November. And that is a great victory,” said trustee Lindsay Conner, a member of the board minority that had been demanding an election since the tax was proposed.

Last month, the board voted 4 to 3 to begin taxing virtually every property in the 882-square-mile college district by using an obscure 1972 state law that does not require public approval for a tax increase. The assessment would have taken effect in November and would have raised money for repairing and renovating the district’s nine campuses.

But the move led to fierce objections from residents--nearly 30,000 filed written protests--and from a bipartisan group of state and local lawmakers. All accused the district of violating the spirit of Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative requiring two-thirds voter approval for most tax increases.

With pressures mounting on the district to withdraw the plan, two trustees who support the tax--Althea Baker and David Lopez-Lee--agreed earlier this week to relent and give voters a say in the matter. The two other tax proponents, Gloria Romero and Kenneth Washington, were absent Friday.

“I think it might have been the R-word” that led to the turnabout, said Patricia Bell Hearst, president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., one of three large homeowners groups in the county that had begun working to recall the four trustees who voted to impose the tax.

The issue will now be decided Nov. 5 by the 1.86 million registered voters in the college district, which stretches from Sylmar to San Pedro and includes the entire city of Los Angeles. If a voting majority approves, the tax would begin in 1997.

Already, however, the district’s pursuit to become only the second college district in California (after the Kern Community College District) to levy a so-called landscaping and lighting assessment has been a costly one--financially and politically.

The proposed tax has cost the financially strapped district, which oversees nine colleges and 97,000 students, nearly $1 million in mailing and consultant costs. The November election may cost another $1 million.

Meanwhile, residents and politicians alike say the district’s actions may have irreparably hurt its image.

Recall organizers said they are still considering campaigns against Romero and Washington, the trustees who missed Friday’s vote.

“I have to look at why the two of them were missing,” said Gordon Murley, a San Fernando Valley homeowner leader who has been active in the recall drive.

But pressure from Sacramento lifted Friday in the wake of the college board’s reversal. Assembly Majority Leader James E. Rogan (R-Glendale) said he will withdraw two legislative efforts to thwart the district’s tax.

One proposal, stalled in a conference committee, would have withheld $1.10 in state funds from the district for every $1 it raised through the tax. Another, which passed an Assembly committee Wednesday, would have required two-thirds voter approval of the tax.

Under the ballot measure approved Friday, the district proposes funding about $205 million in landscaping, lighting and recreational improvements to its largely dilapidated campuses. District residents would pay the tax for a period of 20 years.

In addition to the proposed $12-a-year levy on homeowners, the district wants to charge $9.36 per unit to apartment and condominium owners, $66 per acre for commercial property, $51.36 per acre for industrial property, and $123.12 per acre for mobile home parks.

To the dismay of anti-tax crusaders, the state Supreme Court ruled several years ago that landscaping and lighting assessment districts are not covered by the provisions of Proposition 13.

On the same ballot this November, however, will be a state constitutional amendment that would lock in the public’s right to vote on such assessment district and other types of taxes.