Fixed-income Santa Monica-Malibu senior citizens and renters should see the color RED when they view the many new bond measures asking for an additional $29 billion of new Property and Parcel Tax Bond Measures on their November ballot. Pass-through property taxes to renters are just a small sign of the obliteration of the state of California’s wealth, and Santa Monica-Malibu property taxpayers and renters are paying the price.
The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Measure EE is an example of but one of the 10 or so “blank checks” that the property taxpayer and renter are asked to support. Measure EE proponents paint the SMMUSD schools Crimson Red in debt.
In my day (’50s) schools were colored in primitive Italian white, Spartan gray or metal green, not ink red. I reminisce that schools contained rows of lockers most of which could be found in the gym. In the gym, lockers were lined up against the wall atop chilly, unpainted cement. Lockers were secured with the proverbial combination lock. There was no furniture. A single wooden bench bolted to metal posts sunk in the cement was sufficient. Comfort, let alone warmth, was not listed in the specifications of building locker rooms. In fact, comfort in a locker room was frowned upon as “unmanly.” Locker rooms were just plain functional.
There were never enough towels. Often I dried off with a tee shirt, blotted with paper towels, or shared. The older guys sometimes got two towels-one to stand on (the floors were always flooded) and one to dry off with. The shortage of towels was offset by an abundance of carnage dolefully given out by seniors to underclassmen. Mostly, it was pretty harmless hazing. To a senior classman, drying was a towel’s secondary purpose.
Its primary use was to raise red welts on bare backsides of underclassmen via snapping. Trying to get from the shower back to one’s locker was to run a gauntlet. I certainly have not forgotten the sear of a wet towel sting. Seniors used the locker room to adjust attitudes of younger schoolmates.
As the years passed it became readily apparent to me, and all of those who went through this passage of life, that while we went to the showers to clean up our bodies, it was the ritual of the locker room that taught us how to clean up our approach to life, to be answerable for our actions.
The SMMUSD and our state government should be answerable for their actions, but they have not been accountable to voters. Seniors must once again adjust attitudes of our “youthful” government. The state, county and local school district want more money and less accountability and they expect property taxpayers and renters to pay for it. We must protect ourselves with our votes in November.
And that is all I have to say.
Tom Fakehany