Esparto defeats $100 parcel tax for schools

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Posted July 21st, 2011 by Charlotte Draper No Comments »

Voters in the Esparto Unified School District on Tuesday overwhelmingly defeated a proposed $100 annual parcel tax to support the rural district’s beleaguered schools.

Returns from the Yolo County Elections Office showed Measure B had lost, with 669 no votes (70 percent) and 285 yes votes (30 percent). The measure needed a two-thirds vote to pass.

“I’m just thinking what next? What will we have to cut?” said Jane Stallings, a member of the Esparto Board of Education and a leading advocate for the parcel tax.

The ballot measure was an unusual bid by a small, working-class school district to adopt a parcel tax.

Generally, voters in affluent, liberal districts, many of them in the Bay Area, have adopted parcel taxes to supplement school revenue.

The well-heeled university town of Davis is the only community in the Sacramento region to adopt such taxes. Residents there have approved multiple parcel taxes and now pay $520 a year.

As the grass-roots Esparto campaign began in May, Stallings and other school officials described the proposed tax as a last-ditch effort to spare the district’s three schools and 1,100 students from further cuts to teaching jobs, classes and school transportation.

“It finally got so bad we had to try,” Superintendent Aida Buelna said in May.

The measure would have raised up to $1.5 million over the next five years.

The district, which stretches from the outskirts of Woodland to the Capay Valley, has cut about $1.7 million from its annual budget of roughly $11 million in recent years, school officials said.

About 12 percent of teaching jobs have been eliminated, along with the jobs of aides who help the area’s many English-language learners. The district also can no longer afford to bus teams to athletic events, officials said.

The parcel tax was generally regarded as a long shot in a rural region during tough economic times.

The district is home to farmworkers, blue-collar laborers and Cache Creek casino employees.

Ranchers who own multiple, unconnected parcels grumbled about the potential $100-a-year tax for each one.

Contiguous parcels of farmland could have been grouped as one for tax purposes under the measure, and senior citizens could have applied for an exemption.

School board members held two sparsely attended town hall meetings in June to help answer questions, and proponents spent evenings phoning their neighbors for support.

“I’m really glad we tried,” Stallings said. “We had to try to do anything we could to make it better for the students to provide an education that can really prepare young people for the world they face.”

Stallings said the board would have to address the difficult budget situation at its next meeting in August and could only hope that the state budget picture improves.

School officials would begin writing grants and calling on volunteers to help, Stallings said.

“We’re very resilient,” she said. “We will find a way.”

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