By Wade Major Malibu
Editor:
There can be no question as to the unacceptability of any attempt to bail the school district out of its current fiscal woes by increasing the parcel tax.
Having received my entire pre-collegiate, K-12 education in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, I was witness to unprecedented waste and misplaced priorities at every level — waste which I find it hard to believe has suddenly vanished over the course of the intervening years.
I am naturally, therefore, skeptical of claims on the part of the Board of Education that a parcel tax is the only means of resolving the monetary shortfall.
It is my belief that you do not want to make the tough decisions, that you believe the property owners of the district to be a cash cow, that you regard the school system as a sacred cow. Neither is true — there are no cows in this situation, only good and bad, fair and unfair, sound and unsound fiscal policy.
Parcel and property taxes, especially as pertain to funding education, are antiquated and lazy governance unbecoming any forward thinking body.
They are unfair because they lay the burden of debt on those who did not incur it and who are not most likely to benefit from its removal. They are unsound because there is no correlation between the need of the district and the property owner’s ability to pay.
With property values in the Santa Monica and Malibu areas reaching new heights, there is a perception that a few more dollars on the property tax bills won’t be noticed. This perception could not be more wrong.
While they live on multi-million dollar lots, many such property owners are 20-, 30-, 40- and even 50-year residents — often retirees on fixed incomes. Your problems are not their fault, and the resolution of such problems should not be their burden. Their homes are aging — they have roofs to repair, plumbing to re-pipe, insurance to pay and other priorities which, frankly, are no one’s business but their own.
Pep rallies, school activities, special programs and the education of other people’s children are not their concern.
You should also understand that the parcel tax is not the only bond appearing on the property tax bill. Citizens are up to their necks in bonded indebtedness — $50 here, $100 there.
For those on fixed incomes, even those who live on highly-assessed properties, such an accumulation can quickly amount to hardship. And yet there are municipalities and communities all over this country, even in California, which do not rely on parcel taxes and property taxes to fund their services and their schools.
I urge you to look to them for innovative and creative ideas. At the very least you owe it to this community to involve property owners in the process — let the community have oversight of your budget and make suggestions as to where they think cuts can be made. It is, after all, their money you are asking to spend.
The cuts might not be popular — cuts never are — but they would be fair and responsible. If you were working in the private sector, you would have no choice but to make cuts or seek more creative means of funding.
Many of us grow weary of the argument that “we all benefit from the education of our children.” If this is the case, then please find a way to make everyone pay equally for the education of our children and not just homeowners.
But don’t trot out the “plight of our children” as justification — emotional extortion may appeal to people’s hearts but it doesn’t obfuscate hard facts and common sense.
There is no more tragic irony in this situation than the fact that many who must live on a budget find it hard to do so because they must pick up the tab for officials who cannot live on theirs.
Wade Major
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Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 10, 2002. Read the original PDF.