Residents of Malibu at the June 3 election are being asked to subsidize Santa Monica school children because the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District sold out to big business and the wealthy renters. It’s called Proposition S. The burden falls hardest on those people who own empty lots. They will be forced to pay an additional $225 a year for each empty parcel.
The ad hoc tax committee (Save our Schools) bought the business community’s support by bowing to their demands to not include a square footage tax in the formula. This saves the major property owners hundreds of thousands of dollars and it’s money that the “cash-strapped” schools will never collect. No wonder they hired a PR flack and contribute to the campaign.
A11 this is very unfair to the shrinking percentage of property owners who now must carry a larger share of the burden. The burden is put on condo owners, homeowners and the owners of empty parcels. And what’s really stupid is that all these concessions mean the schools will collect millions of dollars less because of them.
Senior property owners over 65 who reside in their home can ask and receive an exemption. They won’t have to pay the $225 annual tax. The plans are for exemptions to be granted by the school board on a case-by-case basis. Senior renters are not exempt, by the way Because it is a parcel tax, rather than a tax on each dwelling unit like Manhattan Beach is proposing, the wealthy renters in the large apartment buildings in Santa Monica will pay virtually nothing.
So what happens when hundreds of wealthy senior homeowners ask for and get exemptions? How about the hundreds or thousands of “senior” landlords over 65? They can ask for and get exemptions, too.
This means hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual income for the schools that is waived. And those who are the richest can opt out thanks to the Save Our Schools committee who apparently would rather play politics than raise and collect an honest and fair tax.
They’ll be back with some other lame tax proposal a year or two from now. Because, even without the state cuts, they were projecting an $11 million deficit next year. For the above reasons, among others, I cannot support Proposition S,
Mathew Millen
