Irvine’s Measure A Defeat: Both Sides Invoke Principle

* The defeat of Measure A, a reasonable tax to enhance the education of the children of Irvine voters, rather typifies the thinking of many south Orange County residents.

It’s this whole thing of “don’t interrupt my comfortable life with the realities of living. Keep the jails and the garbage dumps away. Keep the noise of overhead planes over somebody else. Just let me live my pleasant life under the tiled roof of my secluded tract home and export the dreary problems of my world to someone else.”

Eunice Cluck, the leading opponent of the tax, summed up NIMBYism at its best when she insinuated that if only those who had voted for the $95 per parcel tax would have instead made a donation of $167 to make up the school district shortfall, then those others who apparently do not feel quality education for their children is worth paying for would be off the hook.

In any event, your April 13 article says she “doubts that cuts and layoffs will happen” presumably because someone, somewhere, will pick up the tab. Now, with two-thirds majority approval required on [major] county projects, we are going to see the Clucks of this world put a stop to anything that does not directly benefit them or might cost them a nickel or two.

TIMOTHY MORTON

Orange

* I heard about the failure of Measure A and leaped for joy.

Rather than the schools relying on a never-ending gravy train of taxes, they will be forced to find the money somewhere else.

Did anyone really believe the school board’s pledge that they would try to lobby for additional state funding even if the tax were passed?

The message came through loud and clear--we want good schools. We are willing to pay more for our homes, high property taxes and unreasonable Mello-Roos fees in order to see this happen.

We believe that good schools should be rewarded for their efforts--with money from the state budget. Why is it that poor-performing schools reap a gravy train of funding while good schools receive nothing?

Rather than mail a $95 check, I think every resident should mail a letter to Gov. Gray Davis, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Christopher Cox, informing them of our dilemma.

JUDITH CHIMITS

Irvine

* The failure of Measure A to raise taxes for schools comes as no surprise.

Why would the measure pass when Irvine residents are well aware of the excessive amount of money the city continually wastes on El Toro?

Irvine has wasted in excess of 4 million surplus tax dollars to kill El Toro thus far, while it proposed to raise $3 million more in taxes to help its failing schools.

If Irvine can think of clever ways to litigate and complicate the El Toro issue, surely it can’t be too difficult to think of creative ways to take the city’s surplus tax dollars and put them indirectly into their own schools to better their city.

RUSSELL NIEWIAROWSKI

Santa Ana Heights

* For the second time in less than six months, a parcel tax designed to benefit Irvine schools has failed to generate enough support.

Measure A opponents say it’s not about the money. Well, it’s not about their money, so to speak, the money in their pockets. They say that the state of California had a surplus, so it’s only right that the state fork over some dough to the schools.

They say that the city should press for an update of an old funding formula--set back in the 1970s--that classified Irvine as a rural community. Rurally classified communities are entitled to less state funding than others.

What the opponents say is all true. But what I’d like to ask is this: Whatever happened to the notion of members of the community coming together to support one another, to support our schools?

We pay 7.75% in sales tax whenever we eat out, buy a car, lease a car and go to the mall. When I drive down Culver, every other car I see is new. What’s really going on?

I understand that people do not want to pay the $95 on principle. But who are they punishing?

MEREDITH GORDON RESNICK

Irvine