Bonds Pass in La Habra, Newport-Mesa Districts

The La Habra City and Newport-Mesa school districts gained entry to a select club Tuesday night, joining a spate of Orange County school systems that have successfully persuaded two-thirds of their voters to tax themselves to repair dilapidated schools and ease overcrowding.

La Habra’s $16-million bond measure passed easily, with 72.8% of the vote, and voter support for Newport Mesa Unified School District’s $110-million bond proposal nearly matched it with 71.9%.

“We are celebrating! We feel that all our hard work was well worthwhile,” said La Habra City school board member Nancy S. Zinbert. “We got out there and told the parents of our students how important it was, and I think people realized it was in their own best interest to support this bond issue.”

“That’s terrific, just terrific,” said Orange County Department of Education Supt. John F. Dean. “I hope it shows people are beginning to listen.”

At the Avila’s El Ranchito restaurant in Costa Mesa, a crowd of about 150 bond supporters were celebrating even before results were returned.

“We’re very upbeat!” yelled Mark Schultheis, a co-chair of Citizens to Rebuild Our Schools, over the festive din. “We don’t have all the results yet, but we’re really optimistic.”

Plagued by leaky plumbing, unstable foundations and crowded portable classrooms, the Newport-Mesa and La Habra City school districts had sought voter approval for the millions of dollars in bonds, hoping to fund substantial repairs to their crumbling schools.

The La Habra City School District bond will cost taxpayers $22.75 per $100,000 of assessed value and the money will be divided among all nine of the district’s schools, which serve kindergarten through eighth grade. With $10 million in state matching funds available, the district plans a $26-million modernization effort.

Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s bond measure will cost property owners in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa $22.35 per $100,000 of assessed valuation and will make that district eligible for $53 million from the state.

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s vote, bond advocates and opponents, particularly in the Newport-Mesa school district, were contacting voters to swing support to their side.

Neither side has followed the strategy of recent school-funding campaigns, however, which were all-out, do-or-die efforts with placards and banners, telephone blitzes and public rallies.

Until the Buena Park School District won approval for a $13.8-million bond in 1998, passing a school tax in Orange County was about as easy as banning waves from the shore.

County voters are notoriously anti-tax, and although a recent series of successful school measures has seemed promising to educators, voters’ historical rejection of school bonds looms large at every election.

Before the Buena Park bond passed, only six of 17 bond measures had won voter approval--the last occurring in 1975. In the three years after that success, six additional bond measures went down to defeat.

Twenty years would pass before voters in one of the county’s poorest and most overcrowded districts, Anaheim City, were asked to approve a $48-million bond for school construction, and the streak would continue; that bond failed in 1998. Then, later that year, the Buena Park bond passed.

The long history of tax rejection is the reason school officials do not yet know how to gauge voter support for a bond measure. Has the county philosophy undergone a sea change, or are specific tax measures successful for specific reasons?

For a time, the several school bonds that have passed since 1998--$145 million in Santa Ana Unified, $65 million in Capistrano Unified, $27 million in Brea Olinda Unified and $9.7 million in Magnolia School District--gave hope to educators throughout the county that if they sought more money for schools, voters would foot the bill.

In Santa Ana, school officials made allies of potential budget critics, offering businesspeople the right to have oversight of the bond money once it was approved. That tactic, along with widespread support from labor and neighborhood groups, contributed to the easy passage of that bond.

But in Irvine, where voters twice in one year refused a parcel tax, neither threats of teacher layoffs nor warnings about the ruination of arts enrichment programs could garner the necessary two-thirds support.

And in Huntington Beach Union High School District, which saw a bond measure fail last year, some anti-tax voters said they fully understood the maintenance issues at stake but simply had lost faith in the fiscal abilities of the school trustees.

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Final Election Returns

NEWPORT-MESA UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT

A--$110-million bond measure--$22.35 per $100,000 assessed valuation

(Requires 2/3 approval)

*--*

100% Precincts Reporting Votes % Yes* 14,807 71.9 No 5,799 28.1

*--*

LA HABRA CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT

K--$16-million bond measure--$22.75 per $100,000 assessed valuation

(Requires 2/3 approval)

*--*

100% Precincts Reporting Votes % Yes* 2,731 72.8 No 1,019 27.2

*--*

* Winning side of measures are in bold type.

Los Angeles Times