GILROY
– A parcel tax to improve reading and fund teacher stipends at
all county schools will not appear on this November’s ballot.
The tax did not garner the necessary two-thirds support from the
State Legislature to allow either the Santa Clara County Board of
Supervisors or the county education office to place the first-ever
countywide schools tax on the ballot.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – A parcel tax to improve reading and fund teacher stipends at all county schools will not appear on this November’s ballot.
The tax did not garner the necessary two-thirds support from the State Legislature to allow either the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors or the county education office to place the first-ever countywide schools tax on the ballot.
The proposed $195 parcel tax would have added an estimated $2.8 million to Gilroy Unified School District coffers to improve reading scores, fund teacher stipends of roughly $2,000 and target low-performing students. Countywide, school districts would have received $77 million.
Pursuing two-thirds approval from legislators was not ideal, said Dennis Cima, director of education for the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, which proposed the tax plan.
“It’s never easy to get two-thirds of any group on an issue,” Cima said.
As it is today, only individual districts may impose such a parcel tax. Before the tax – the first countywide tax for school districts to be pursued in California – could be placed on a ballot, legislators needed to pass a bill allowing a county agency to place such a measure. With the election coming up in November, supporters needed two-thirds approval to pass the law quickly, rather than the usual majority approval for the law to go into effect in January.
“We are looking to a majority vote of the Legislature next year if that’s the direction our coalition wants to go,” Cima said.
The organization of education, business and government leaders, first proposed the county parcel tax to improve public education last year, to mixed support. In recent polls, 70 percent of voters questioned supported the tax.
County supervisors last month voted to support the bill, although Supervisor Don Gage, who represents South County, said he was not convinced he would support putting the tax on the Nov. 2 ballot. The measure would have to pass by a two-thirds majority.
“Our coalition is essentially taking the summer off,” said Cima of the task force that recommended the tax, “but we’ll be back in the fall to discuss next steps, and if there is still interest – which we’re hearing from the many groups we’ve worked with over the past two years that there is – we will pursue a majority vote next year and perhaps a ballot measure in 2006.”
The bill was two Republican votes shy of two-thirds approval in the Assembly and met that threshold in the state Senate, Cima said.
One group opposing the tax, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, called the tax regressive because it would be imposed uniformly, regardless of a homeowner’s ability to pay.
John Coupal, the group’s president, in a statement Thursday called the urgency legislation “yet another blatant attempt to undermine the voters of this state …”
Also, Coupal said, the countywide vote would mean districts where less than two-thirds of voters supported the tax would still have to pay.
At this point in the process, Cima noted, the Legislature would be voting only on the bill to allow the tax to go to the voters, not on authorizing the tax itself.
A task force of education and business groups formed by Santa Clara County Superintendent Colleen Wilcox, has been exploring ways to structure the tax for more than two years.
“Part of what we were doing was we weren’t going down a road, we were building it with this approach, so when you’re trying to do these things, people are reluctant sometimes when you’re carving a path,” Cima said.
