L.A. College Trustees to Vote on Tax Increase

Four months after shelving one controversial tax plan, the trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District will consider a new proposal this week to add about $8 a year to homeowner property tax bills to finance improvements at the system’s nine campuses.

District trustees are scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to begin the process to enact the tax, which would affect about 1 million properties but would not require voter approval.

Critics say the move violates the spirit of Proposition 13, which requires two-thirds voter approval for most property tax increases.

Under the plan being presented to the board, commercial property owners in the district would pay about $32 in new taxes annually and apartment owners would pay $34.32. The 882-square-mile community college district stretches from Sylmar to San Pedro and covers about 45% of the 2.24 million parcels in the county.

Before a final vote can be taken, the trustees must prepare legal documents detailing the new tax and hold a public hearing.

A 1992 California Supreme Court ruling allows public agencies to impose new property taxes without voter approval under the state’s Landscaping and Lighting Act. Residents can block the tax if more than half of all affected property owners file written protests.

Using this obscure law, the college district could raise $18 million a year. The tax money cannot be directly used to hire teachers or build classrooms, but it could finance bonds for some facility improvements. The money would also help defray the cost of outdoor maintenance and landscaping, freeing $4 million in the district’s general fund to add courses and instructors.

“Our campuses are in dire need . . . they’re in shambles,” said board of trustees President David Lopez-Lee, the sponsor of the new tax proposal.

In June, Chancellor Neil Yoneji withdrew a similar tax proposal after the trustees appeared to be in a 3-3 deadlock. But the concept gained new life in July when newly elected trustee Gloria Romero, a Cal State Los Angeles professor, filled the board’s vacant seventh seat and announced she would consider the plan.

If the board approves the plan Wednesday, it will survey local residents to gauge their level of support. Lopez-Lee said he will drop the idea if it is not supported by at least a majority of those contacted in the telephone survey. Trustees recently discussed holding an advisory election, but dropped that idea because of the about $2-million cost.

Meanwhile, district trustee Lindsay Conner, who led the fight against the prior tax proposal, said he will do so again, calling it an evasion of Proposition 13 tax limits that is “inappropriate at best and illegal at worst.”

“We need the money, but you have to raise money in a way that is legal and appropriate,” Conner said. “You can’t let the ends justify the means.”

District officials said that their plan is legal, and that courts, including the state Supreme Court, have upheld similar taxes levied by other public agencies.

Calling that approach a loophole to the intent of Proposition 13, tax foes led by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. are seeking an initiative for the November, 1996, state ballot that would require voter or property owner approval of all future such proposals and some existing ones.