Voters Approve 5 of 7 School Bond Measures

With school districts scrambling to find money to replace or renovate aging buildings, voters approved five of the seven bond measures on the ballot Tuesday but sent two others to defeat in Torrance and Compton.

Bond measures passed in Duarte, Montebello, Paramount, South Whittier and Temple City.

Voters in Torrance, faced with the same school bond proposal for the third time in less than a year, gave the measure an early lead in one of two dozen Los Angeles County municipal elections held Tuesday. The measure got a 63% “yes” vote but that was not enough for the two-thirds majority needed for passage.

In other elections, voters were choosing mayors, filling city council seats and casting ballots on tax increases.

As interest builds for high-profile statewide races that will appear on the June 2 primary ballot, the elections Tuesday offered a different kind of politics, the kind without multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns and tracking polls.

In some cities, the election results through the night were passed on to local law en-forcement agencies for dissemination to the public.

In the City of Industry, election results were given out by the Sheriff’s Department after city officials went home.

Voters in Vernon, another small industrial city not far from the Los Angeles Civic Center, gave unanimous approval to two measures to clarify the city’s tax code and authorize the City Council to establish a parcel tax. With only 55 registered voters, all voting was by absentee ballot. The measures passed by identical 40-0 margins.

In Avalon on Santa Catalina Island, where City Clerk Shirley Davy keeps close tabs on most of the community’s 2,100 voters, turnout for the election was 60%, roughly triple the rate of many other cities.

But nowhere was the campaigning as intense as in Torrance, where school administrators and supporters had pleaded with voters to pass an $80.5-million bond measure. The money would have been used to repair and fix schools that are 30 to 80 years old.

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Twice before, identical measures were put before voters and received majority votes, but each time they fell short of the two-thirds majorities required by the California Constitution. In June, the bond measure received a 57% yes vote. In November, voters gave it a 62% yes vote.

Hoping for a different result, about 75 people showed up Tuesday for a party at the Torrance Marriott. Gathering in a room festooned with black and yellow balloons, supporters cheered when they heard that absentee voters were giving the measure a 76% yes vote.

“We are guardedly optimistic. We pushed very hard for absentee ballots,” said Mary Taylor, campaign chairwoman for the Yes on G Committee.

Voters in nearby Compton defeated a $107-million bond measure backed by the Compton Unified School District to repair its badly neglected schools. Many of the schools are in an advanced state of disrepair, with leaky roofs and unusable restrooms.

The district has been under state supervision since 1993 because of financial and classroom problems. The bond measure generated heated opposition from Mayor Omar Bradley and others, who contended that the advisory-only school board would have little say in how the money would be spent.

The longest ballot Tuesday was in Long Beach, the county’s second-largest city, where residents voted for mayor, city attorney, city prosecutor and auditor, along with five of nine City Council seats.

Long Beach Mayor Beverly O’Neill, a strong favorite going into the election, jumped off to a big lead in early returns. She faced four candidates, none of whom has held elective office before.

O’Neill was considered so strong going into her first reelection campaign that potential mayoral candidates considered her unbeatable. O’Neill benefited from steps the city has taken to rebound from such economic blows as the layoffs at McDonnell Douglas and the Navy’s closure of its once-thriving naval base and shipyard.

The relative peace in Long Beach was in sharp contrast to O’Neill’s first campaign, when 13 candidates ran in the primary for mayor, including two City Council members and the incumbent mayor, Ernie Kell.

A much more competitive race was the contest for city prosecutor. The retirement of John Vander Lans, who has held the office for the last 20 years, kicked off a four-candidate scramble to take his place.

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Deputy City Atty. Tom Reeves held a narrow lead over three opponents in the election for prosecutor--Evan Anderson Braude, on leave as a special assistant to Los Angeles City Atty. James K. Hahn; Assistant City Prosecutor Robert R. Recknagel, and Gerrie Schipske, an attorney and victim’s advocate.

As with other city races in Long Beach, there will be a runoff June 2 if no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote.

In a winner-take-all race for Long Beach city attorney, Robert E. Shannon, the chief deputy to retiring City Atty. John R. Calhoun, was leading Wayne Kistner, a local attorney and president of a local civic group, Leadership Long Beach.

In Arcadia, a measure to increase the city’s utility users tax from 5% to 7% until 2002 lost by a big margin.

A special property tax to rebuild the library and buy books in Monterey Park was just short of the two-thirds majority it needed. About 100 to 200 absentee and provisional ballots are yet to be counted.

Other areas that have passed similar library taxes include Pasadena, South Pasadena and the Altadena Library District.

In Whittier, four out of five voters were favoring continuation of a 10% tax on hotel rooms.

In La Canada Flintridge, former Los Angeles Fire Chief Donald O. Manning was locked in a tight race with three other candidates for a seat on the City Council.

Local bond issues to finance campus renovations and expansions, such as the ones on Tuesday’s ballots, have become regular fixtures up and down California.

With money tight in recent years, school districts have been forced to postpone spending for such big-ticket items as new roofs, plumbing and wiring on buildings that are now 30, 40 or 50 years old or more.

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Moreover, the state has tightened its rules for dispensing proceeds from its own school bond measures and made it all but impossible for local districts to get money from Sacramento unless they can provide local matching funds.

In addition, the state’s class-size reduction program, coupled with a growing school-age population, has dramatically increased the need for more classrooms around the state.

Once bond measures are approved by voters, the bonds are sold to investors who are repaid with interest over a set period, usually 25 to 30 years. To pay off the bonds, taxpayers are charged an annual amount based on their property’s assessed value.

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Correspondents Deborah Belgum, Tracy Johnson, Sue McAllister and Richard Winton contributed to this story.