Celebrity Endorsements Stack Up For School Parcel Taxes

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By Rob Kuznia, Noozhawk Staff Writer

Measures H and I draw backing from Jeff Bridges, Anthony Edwards and Glen Phillips as Santa Barbara School Districts seek makeup funding for music, theater and language programs.

Some celebrities with local connections are lending their support to the campaign for a pair of school parcel taxes that would bring, among other things, more music education into Santa Barbara’s public schools.

Former ER actor Anthony Edwards, a Santa Barbara Junior High alum, and San Marcos High alum Glen Phillips, a singer-songwriter made famous by the band Toad the Wet Sprocket, have agreed to cut radio spots to promote Measures H and I on the Nov. 4 ballot, said Lynn Rodriguez, a board member of the Santa Barbara Education Foundation, which is spearheading the campaign, and which has long been a leading fundraiser for local public schools.

Actor Jeff Bridges also has endorsed the two measures, she said.

“We are very, very thankful to them,” Rodriguez said Thursday.

The endorsements are a welcome boost to the advocates, in no small part because the threshold for passing the taxes is high: Two-thirds of local voters must cast a yes vote for the measures to succeed. Plus, voters this year are facing a higher-than-usual number of requests for their tax dollars. The city of Santa Barbara, for instance, is floating Measure G, which seeks permission to continue a decades-old practice of taxing residents on the use of their landlines and cell phones. And voters throughout Santa Barbara County are being asked to pass Measure A, which would continue the half-cent sales tax for transportation funding.

The Santa Barbara School Districts’ parcel-tax requests come at a time when schools across California are struggling to pay for the basics, let alone some of the enrichment courses once considered mainstays of the public-education experience.

In April, the Santa Barbara school board, largely beset by a historic state budget crisis, cut $4 million, or about 4 percent, from its 2008-09 discretionary budget. The year before, it cut $2.5 million.

The parcel taxes would put money back into some of the local programs that have declined in recent years, such as music, theater and foreign language.

Across the elementary district, for instance, there is only one grade — fourth — in which all students are exposed to some sort of music education. (Fifth- and sixth-graders have the option to take an instrument.) The parcel tax for the elementary schools would bring music instruction and instruments to all students in grades K-3, Superintendent Brian Sarvis said.

And this year, due to budget cuts, ninth grades across the district lost the small class sizes in math instruction that had been in place for years. The parcel tax targeting the seventh-through-12th-grade district would restore that program, as well as enhance the spartan music and theater programs of the junior high schools. It also would bring more foreign language classes to the high schools. A year ago, for instance, students, parents and teachers lamented when Santa Barbara High cut its German class. Latin classes also have been shrinking, and students at some high schools have expressed interest in taking Mandarin.

The measures also would bring enhanced science and technology programs to students in grades K-12.

Officials stress that none of the money would pay for administrators’ salaries.

Parcel taxes are flat taxes, in that they charge the same amount for every parcel. In most cases, a home is located on a single parcel. An entire apartment complex, too, usually is located on a single parcel. Typically, it is the property owners who are most affected by the tax, although the cost is sometimes partly distributed to tenants in the form of higher rents.

Because the local K-12 school system is divided into two school districts — elementary and secondary — the Santa Barbara school board decided in June to put two parcel taxes on the ballot.

Measure I pertains only to residents within the elementary district, which exists within the boundaries of the city of Santa Barbara. It would cost $27 annually per parcel.

Measure H affects those in the seventh-through-12th grade district, or secondary district, which stretches from Goleta to Montecito. It would cost $23 annually per parcel.

If passed, the taxes would be collected for four years. They would generate about $520,000 annually for the elementary district and about $1.1 million a year for the secondary district.

This all means that, should both initiatives pass, a homeowner in Santa Barbara would pay $50 a year — or a total of $200 over four years — while a homeowner in Montecito would pay $23 a year, or a total of $92 over four years.

For both measures, senior citizens age 65 and older can exempt themselves from being taxed. School officials would appoint local citizens to serve on an oversight committee, which will determine how to spend the money. In addition, the money would be audited annually, officials said.

The elementary district’s Measure I does not have any opposition on the ballot, but the secondary district’s Measure H does.

A group of five neighbors who live near Dos Pueblos High signed the ballot in opposition to Measure H.

Led by Goleta resident Rich Foster, they argue that the district was not a good steward of the tax dollars gathered for a facilities bond passed in 2000. For instance, he said, the district dedicated far less money than promised to building new classrooms, and, in Foster’s view, too much money into athletic facilities, such as new swimming pools at each of the three high schools.

“They didn’t build what they said they were going to build,” he said.

Foster also has said the district has operated on bad faith in regards to how the construction from the facility bond took place.

Over the past couple of years, he has attended many Santa Barbara school board meetings to publicly complain about the construction of football lighting and bleachers at Dos Pueblos. For instance, he said, crews on a regular basis began making noise as early as 6:15 a.m., even though the district had said it wouldn’t start work until 7:30 a.m. (The district eventually asked crews to start later.)

Rodriguez, a former Santa Barbara school board member, counters that Foster fails to mention that the district was blindsided by a lawsuit that exposed its deficiencies in complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act. As a result, she said, the district spent far more bond money than was anticipated on bringing the district into compliance.

She added that Foster’s perception of the district has been colored by his anger over the construction.

“I’m not going to say he didn’t have a good reason to be angry,” she said. “I did feel that his arguments were not enough to be able to make that connection.”

As for the celebrity endorsements, Bridges and Phillips have already made a TV ad with the Santa Barbara Education Foundation in support of music education, although it was not connected to the current campaign. Click here to watch the ad.

Over the years, the foundation has all but kept music alive in the elementary schools by raising hundreds of thousands of dollars from organizations such as the Orfalea Foundation.

The celebrities’ endorsements add to a fairly broad base of support for the initiatives. Supporters include well-known Democrats like Santa Barbara Mayor Marty Blum and City Councilman Das Williams, as well as Republicans such as former school board member Bob Pohl. In fact, one of the first people to suggest that the district float a parcel tax was Lanny Ebenstein, also a Republican.

The Santa Barbara Taxpayers Association has yet to make public its position.

Noozhawk staff writer Rob Kuznia can be reached at rkuznia@noozhawk.com.

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