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School board seeks poll on parcel tax
By Jeff Hudson | Enterprise staff writer
The Davis school board took the first step toward a campaign to renew the district’s instructional parcel tax on Thursday night.
Trustees asked Superintendent James Hammond to recommend a pollster who will help the school board determine when it would be best to go to the voters, and to research how much money the voters would be likely to approve for a parcel tax renewal.
The existing parcel tax measures provide the school district with about $6.6 million per year until June 2012. Davis voters approved Measure Q (which charges $200 per single family home per year) in 2007. A second parcel tax — Measure W, which charges an additional $120 per home per year — was approved in 2008.
Even with support from the two existing parcel taxes, the Davis school district is looking at $5.6 million in budget cuts for the coming school year because of reductions in funding to local school districts from the state, as well as the deferral of some state payments to local educational agencies. The school board is considering a draft resolution that would send layoff notices covering 102 full-time positions in the school district. A vote on that resolution is expected on Feb. 18.
Trustee Richard Harris expressed interest in an idea that was suggested by Davis resident Michael Hulsizer, who specializes in issues relating to education finance. Hulsizer suggested going to the voters with a parcel tax that would essentially be a local loan covering the amount that state government owes the Davis district under the state constitution but is not paying, due to the state budget crisis. In the case of the Davis school district, this amounts to about $5 million a year.
“It would be helping us out of the hole that (the state) has dug for us,” Harris said. “When the state funding starts to come back (up to the constitutional level), we would reduce the parcel tax commensurate with that amount of money (that has been restored),” Harris said. “As the state pays us back, we give it back to the voters.”
Associate Superintendent Bruce Colby outlined the basic mechanics of parcel tax finance. For each $100 per home per year that Davis voters approve, the school district receives about $2 million to support classroom programs. Given the existing parcel taxes (which provide $6.6 million annually) and the district’s shortfall of $5.6 million, a parcel tax renewal totaling $12.2 million would restore funding for existing district programs.
“That’s about a $600 parcel tax (per home, per year)?” asked trustee Susan Lovenburg. “That would be a ballpark number” to sustain the district’s current programs by backfilling state reductions, Colby said.
This article originally appeared in the Davis Enterprise on February 7, 2010. The complete story is available to subscribers at http://www.davisenterprise.com.