School Bond Defeat Tied to Economics in Moorpark

Precinct-by-precinct voting results for the failed $16-million Moorpark school bond measure suggest household income was a key factor and that drastically cutting the size of the bond might be necessary for a future victory, say political scientists and at least one school board member.

The bond measure won 61% of the vote in a special election April 14, the same day voters in Thousand Oaks turned down a similar, though much larger, school bond proposal. Such measures need two-thirds voter approval.

The level of support varied dramatically from one Moorpark neighborhood to the next. Generally, the more affluent the area, the more likely its voters were to support the measure, according to figures from the county registrar of voters.

The strongest backing for the proposal, for example, came from the city’s wealthiest neighborhood, Mountain Meadows, where the two precincts voted 74% and 78% in favor. And 64% of the ballots cast in the high-income Campus Canyon area in north Moorpark favored the measure.

Support dipped to 58% in the more moderate-income Peach Hills neighborhood, and it plunged in lower-income areas to 49.6% in Varsity Park and 46.7% in midtown.

Such a voting pattern is atypical for school bond measures, said Jon Steepee, chairman of the political science department at California Lutheran University.

Usually, wealthier residents vote against school bonds because they pay the bulk of the higher taxes, he said. And residents with children in poorer neighborhoods are more likely to vote for a school bond because they see advantages for their kids, Steepee said.

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School officials and some campaign experts, however, are not surprised that the opposite occurred in Moorpark.

“I would attribute it to economics,” said Moorpark Unified School District trustee David Pollock. “I know that there’s a lot of price sensitivity on taxing issues in the community. In the downtown area, the homeowners are more strapped for money than people are in the Mountain Meadows area.”

Many downtown residents may have found it more difficult to pay the $29 annually per $100,000 in assessed value for the next 30 years, Pollock said.

On the other hand, residents of Mountain Meadows, a neighborhood targeted by bond backers because of its high number of parents with school-age children and historically high voter turnout, may have found it easier to afford the tax, Pollock said.

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In addition, those in Mountain Meadows may have had more incentive to vote because Moorpark High School, located in the neighborhood, stood to gain more than $9 million in improvements if the bond measure passed, he said.

If the district wants to win the next time it seeks a bond, trustee Clint Harper and others said, it must do more than fine-tune its campaign.

Harper said the list of projects to be funded by the bond should be pared to a minimum. A number of residents said items such as the high school gym, a middle school amphitheater and playground equipment were not essential to education, he said.

Others suggested the district wait before going back to voters.

“If they put it up again within six months, they would probably not only find the same resistance they found before, but it would be magnified. It would be further evidence of a kind of arrogance,” said Herbert Gooch, who heads the graduate school of public administration at California Lutheran University.

He agreed that whittling the wish list should be a top priority.

“If they can disarm the opposition by paring the amount to more bare bones, that may help suppress the vote against it,” Gooch said.

Further, he said, the district should target the low-income voters who least supported the April measure, he said.

Others were less certain that income was key to last month’s result.

School district trustee Tom Baldwin, for example, said a group of midtown residents--voters who opposed the city’s incorporation in 1983 and remain resistant to government--are likely to have voted against the bond, he said.

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Baldwin and Assistant Supt. Frank DePasquale say a more focused grass-roots campaign is needed.

They suggest decentralizing the bond committee, so each campus has a core of supporters who convince friends and neighbors to vote and support the measure.

“In rethinking our strategy, we’re going to put the focus on individual school sites, make it more of a grass-roots effort in each neighborhood surrounding each school,” DePasquale said.

The district plans to decide by the end of the school year, June 12, whether or when to pursue another bond measure, DePasquale said.