College Trustees Defer Tax to November Vote

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 let voters decide the issue in a November election.

The 5-0 vote by the district’s board of trustees reversed a yearlong plan to impose the tax--including an annual $12 charge on homeowners--without direct public approval. It came during a special meeting on the last possible day to call such an election. It also came as angry residents prepared a recall campaign.

“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 outset.

Last month, the board voted 4 to 3 to begin taxing virtually every property in the 882-square-mile college district by invoking an obscure 1972 state law that does not require public approval. The assessment would have taken effect in November.

But the move led to fierce opposition 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, which requires voters’ approval for most tax hikes.

With pressures mounting as the district’s time drew short, two trustees who supported 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 the three largest homeowner groups in the county, which had begun working to recall the four board members.

As a result, the tax will be decided Nov. 5 by the 1.86 million registered voters in the college district that stretches from Sylmar to San Pedro, including the entire city of Los Angeles. If a voting majority approves, the tax would begin in 1997. If a majority rejects the tax, the issue would be dead.

Already, however, the district’s pursuit of becoming 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--both economically and politically.

The proposed tax has already cost the financially troubled district, which oversees nine colleges and 97,000 students, nearly $1 million in mailing and consulting costs. And holding the November election may cost another $1 million out of sparse district funds.

Meanwhile, residents and politicians alike say the district’s actions may have irrevocably hurt its image, regardless of the November ballot measure.

Indeed, 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 homeowners leader who was active in the recall drive.

But pressure from Sacramento lifted Friday in the wake of the college board’s reversal. Assembly Majority Leader James Rogan (R-Glendale) said he was withdrawing 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 new ballot measure approved Friday, the district is proposing to fund about $205 million in landscaping, lighting and recreational improvements for its largely dilapidated campuses. District residents would pay the tax for 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, the landmark 1978 initiative that requires two-thirds voter approval of special taxes.

On the same ballot in November, however, will be a state constitutional amendment sponsored by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., named for the late coauthor of Proposition 13, that would lock in the public’s right to vote on such assessment district levies and other types of taxes.