We got our property tax bill in the mail last week. Property taxes are used for several things, among them to support the State Board of Education and local school districts to hire competent administrators to run the operation of school districts including facility maintenance and needed improvements within the allotted budgets.

About 40 years ago property taxes were raised routinely by politicians without voter approval. This irked many homeowners who saw their tax bill reaching ever higher amounts each year.

Voters initiated and overwhelmingly approved Proposition 13 to establish 1975 as the base tax year and limit future increases to one percent of the original assessed value of the property.

This sounded great, but there was a loophole: All voters, not just property owners who were going to pay for it, could approve additional taxes in the form of bonds.

Special interest groups went to work; bonds were put on the ballot to raise taxes on “the rich” who just happened to own modest homes, to expand government or support niche causes.

Many taxpayer protection groups like the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association (SBCTA) were established to help protect taxpayers from attempts to circumvent the intent of Proposition 13.

Fast forward to 2024. When our tax bill arrived I noticed that when I added up all the bonds, some of which I didn’t vote for, it came to over 10 percent of our total tax bill. That means that somehow, we got a tax increase of more than 10 percent of the assessed value of our home.
 
On Nov. 5 you’ll be voting on some more bonds which if they pass and you own some property will raise your next tax bill even higher.

But renters and businesses leasing property won’t escape. Rental units and commercial spaces rates will increase to recover the higher taxes the property owners pay.

But why does our government need bonds anyway?

In Lompoc, the school district operates on an annual budget that exceeds $150 million a year, one percent of that budget ($1.5 million) goes for “facilities upgrades.” Spread across 15 campuses with multiple buildings on each campus, it means each school could be allotted $100,000 a year to upgrade their facilities.

Other measures like this on the South Coast are on the ballot, too, and statewide there is yet another bond/tax increase to “help schools.”

The State Board of Education keeps adding “education” mandates but don’t include needed funds to maintain buildings where students are taught.

In addition, encouraging a major influx of “undocumented citizens” and mandates to increase housing density increases the number of students without funding additional classrooms making the problem worse.

Over the years, the Lompoc and many other school districts have ignored needed maintenance and relied on “temporary” buildings that are well beyond their service life and are now falling apart to house students.

Meanwhile, teachers, support staff and administrators continue to get pay raises while the buildings they work in are in dire need of repair or replacement.

Now that it has “become an emergency” as roofs leak, floors are rotting and window frames falling out, they come to property owners to bail them out of a situation the state created over several decades.

So, what did the SBCTA, so-called protectors of the taxpayer, do? They endorsed some of these tax increases.

Their leadership and members should have looked deeper into how school budgets are managed from the State Board of Education down to the district level.

Serviceable school buildings are an integral part of educating our children and grandchildren.

An adequate budget must be allotted to facility upgrades on each campus every year, just as they are for staff/teacher raises, to cover the costs of new roofs, and replacement of “temporary” buildings that have become permanent fixtures as a community grows.

Businesses and homeowners understand the need to have sufficient funds available for repairs like those included in these bond measures. But unlike school districts we can’t go to the boss and ask for more money because we didn’t plan for the inevitable property repairs.

This taxpayer is beyond feed-up with the way school districts, and other government operations avoid addressing facility issues until they become an emergency and then come to property owners (the boss) for a tax increase.