Buena Park Poised to Do Unusual: Pass Bond Issue

Voters in Buena Park next week might become the first Orange County community in years to pass a school bond issue.

The $13.8-million referendum to mend overflowing toilets, rewire schools for increased computer capacity, rip out rusty pipes and recondition heating-and-cooling systems is backed by school and city officials and the chamber of commerce. Not only is there no organized opposition, but no one even filed an argument against the measure in the voter pamphlet.

Even the Buena Park School District’s largest property owner, which would face an estimated $11,000 annual tax hike if Measure K passes Tuesday, supports the bond proposal.

“We view it as a good investment in the community,” said John Lindseth, vice president of operations at Nutrilite, a division of Amway.

School officials originally tallied the cost of upgrades to the district’s six elementary schools and one middle school at $42 million. But when a community survey revealed that residents would be unlikely to vote for a tax increase higher than $20 a year, the school board sliced the amount of the bond measure to $13.8 million. The average homeowner will pay about $18 more annually if it passes.

And it will, schools Supt. Carol Holmes Riley vows.

“People can relate to the fact that when things get to be 30 years old, they need some really serious stuff done to them,” she said.

Plumbing, heating and electrical systems that serve the 5,350-student district are shot, Riley said. Four schools contain asbestos, and original sewer lines run underneath five campuses. Sometimes it’s hard to hear the teacher over the roar of the ailing air conditioners, parents said.

Dee Cavenee, a parent volunteer campaigning for the bond measure, said her son was thrilled last year when, as a second-grader, he was placed in one of six new portable classrooms at Carl E. Gilbert Elementary School.

“Walking into a classroom that looks and feels good and new is much better than walking into an old one, a very, very old one,” Cavenee said.

Enrollment growth and the need for more classroom space to accommodate the state’s class-size reduction program in kindergarten through the third grade have stuffed school buildings. An estimated 350 new homes are expected to boost enrollments even more as early as December.

Voters in the Los Alamitos school district passed a Mello-Roos bond issue in 1990 to upgrade neighborhood schools, but that measure exempted residents of Leisure World and other homeowners who are 65 or older from the tax increase.

Before that, the most recent passage of school bonds in Orange County was in May 1975, when the Placentia Unified School District (now Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified) won a $20 million referendum to upgrade and renovate existing schools.

With a two-thirds majority needed for passage under state law, successful bond referendums are infrequent, particularly in fiscally conservative Orange County.

“I’ve not talked to anybody that’s against it,” Buena Park Mayor Gerald Sigler said, “but you never know what people will do when they go to the polls.”

Statewide, 655 school bond measures have appeared on ballots since 1986, and 348 of them passed, said Barbara Miller, research director at EdSource, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education information clearinghouse. Among those that failed, 267 still gained a majority of voter support.

The climate for such bond measures may be more friendly these days, said Fred Yeager, a consultant with the state Department of Education. A roaring economy, low interest rates and high employment may encourage more people to vote yes, he said. School officials also are doing a better job of gauging public support before they ask taxpayers to vote for a school referendum.

“If you know you’re going to get beat up, you don’t put it on the ballot,” Yeager said.

A statewide bond measure, identified on Tuesday’s ballot as Proposition 1A, would pump $9.2 billion into schools for renovations and repairs. If it passes, schools seeking upgrades would finance 20% of the cost and the state would contribute the remaining 80%.

Seven districts in Los Angeles County also will ask voters next week to modernize, revitalize and renovate schools through a bond measure.

Because Buena Park students are served by two school districts--the other is 5,155-student Centralia School District--about half of the city’s 26,297 voters will cast ballots on the school issue. Parents, teachers and other district staff members are phone-banking, leafleting and walking door-to-door to reach those 13,406 voters.

Barbara Smith, a computer lab assistant at Charles G. Emery Elementary School, has been campaigning among several of her elderly neighbors, who aren’t always supporters of school tax hikes. She also has been talking to voters on the phone.

“But I was really surprised by the number of positive responses,” Smith said. Then, she added, tentatively: “I feel kind of encouraged about it.”