Arnold G. York
Why I’m voting no on Measure R
For the entire 20-plus years that I’ve owned The Malibu Times I’ve supported every single education bond issue and every parcel tax. I believe that good schools are an essential part of our community and every citizen has a duty to support the schools. I also supported those parcel taxes and bonds because I thought the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education had the educational interests of all its students, both Santa Monica and Malibu students, at heart.
I’m sorry to say that I no longer believe that. The recent actions of the school board have made it abundantly clear that it is paying more attention to election returns in Santa Monica than it is to students, and the money is going where the votes are located, namely Santa Monica. Malibu constitutes about 20 percent of the school district population and Santa Monica the other 80 percent. The hard fact is unless the Santa Monica-Malibu School Board wants to treat all its students equally and fairly, we in Malibu don’t have the votes to force them to treat us fairly.
The truth is that we’ve been snookered. We all voted for a bond issue in November 2006 with the understanding and reassurances that Malibu would get its fair share of the bond dollars. The numbers weren’t put into the bond language because that would have meant the measure would have required a two-thirds vote to pass instead of 55 percent. It was strictly a “trust us” situation.
Well, recently the school board failed the trust test.
They cut Malibu’s staff-recommended $27.5 million for middle school and high school projects at Malibu High to $13.5 million.
The strange part is that it didn’t have to come to this. This wasn’t a tough decision. There is no shortage of money to prevent the board from giving Malibu its $27.5 million. It was plain and simple power politics. The school board said to us-we’ve got the votes and you can go to hell. Sometimes in politics you have to make tough choices, but this was not one of them.
As previously stated, the district staff had recommended that Malibu get $27.5 million in Measure BB money. At the very last moment, the Measure BB Advisory Committee, after a number of Santa Monica activists protested, cut Malibu’s money to $13.5 million. It then went to the school board. The district staff continued to recommend $27.5 million for Malibu. The school board decided against Malibu, and went with the BB committee’s recommendation of the lower amount.
The strangest part is that recently the bond reserves, which were originally thought to be in the neighborhood of $38 million, could grow to as much as $62 million, so there is clearly no monetary crises.
Well, we’re at a moment of choice. There are currently two active parcel taxes for schools. One parcel tax, Measure S, expires in 2009 and the second parcel tax, Measure Y, in 2011. Measure R would combine the two.
The reason that the parcel tax Measure R is on the ballot is the school board wants to take Malibu out of the loop. If it passes, the parcel taxes becomes permanent and they don’t have to come back to the voters again, which effectively means that we have no political power to impact the school board decision. And which almost forces us to become our own school district. Perhaps that’s what some on the school board want. I don’t know.
There is an old adage-“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Let’s not be fooled a second time. Vote No on Measure R. A “no” vote on R means we all go back to the negotiating table.
P.S. Don’t worry about the money being cut off. If Measure R fails, the old parcel tax money keeps coming to the school, so there is no cutoff to the students.