Voters Will Be Asked to Help Fund Schools : Beverly Hills: The initiative calls for a five-year levy on property to maintain the quality of education. Opponents say it is not the answer to the district’s financial woes.

Beverly Hills voters will be asked to tax city property owners $250 to $750 a year to help shore up the city’s school system under a proposal unveiled by the school board this week.

The tax initiative, which will be on the ballot in an election June 5, must be approved by two-thirds of the voters to take effect.

Supporters say the parcel tax is essential to maintaining the quality of education in the Beverly Hills Unified School District. Opponents, meanwhile, say the tax is not the answer to the district’s financial woes.

The proposed five-year tax, which would raise about $4.5 million a year, would be levied on each of the 9,472 residential and commercial parcels in the city. Each year, condominiums would be assessed $250 per unit and parcels with apartment buildings, $650. Owners of single-family homes would pay $350 if their lot is smaller than 10,000 square feet, $500 if it is between 10,000 and 20,000 square feet, and $650 for anything larger.

The assessment for commercial parcels of 10,000 square feet or less would be $650; for larger parcels, it would be $750.

The tax revenues would go toward maintaining “competitive teacher salaries,” small class sizes, specialized instructors, elective classes and other programs, according to the draft ballot-measure introduced Tuesday night. If the tax fails, the district will have to cut staff and services, including $3.2 million to balance the projected $30-million budget for 1990-91, Supt. Robert French said.

“There’s no more fluff,” French said. “I can’t think of any” alternative way to raise money if the tax fails, he said. “This is it, folks.”

Teacher salaries and teaching time hinge partly on the outcome of the tax election. If the tax passes, teachers will receive an additional 3% salary increase for the 1990-91 school year on top of the 7% raise already provided in the settlement reached after the teachers’ strike last fall.

If the measure fails, more than the 3% increase is at stake. Some teachers may be laid off, and those who are not will have to work longer hours to take up the slack from colleagues who are laid off, according to Judy McIntire, president of the Beverly Hills Education Assn., the union that represents the teachers.

McIntire said the union will work with the district’s tax campaign committee, led by Bernard Nebenzahl and Sooky Goldman, in “one unified effort” to pass the tax.

A parents’ group called Children First, which was formed during the strike and has raised more than $300,000 in cash and pledges for employee salaries, also has promised to support the measure, according to parent Peggy Pollock.

The school board will hold a public hearing on the tax proposal Jan. 30. Board members and other supporters said they hope the variable tax rate eliminates one of the reasons that the district’s last parcel-tax attempt failed.

That tax initiative, in March, 1987, called for a flat fee of $270 per parcel every year for five years. Critics said it was unfair to tax small parcels the same as sprawling estates. The measure was favored by 59% of voters, but that was well short of the two-thirds vote needed for passage.

School board President Frank Fenton said he hopes voters find the tiered rate more equitable.

Critics of the tax proposal say, however, that fairness is not the problem.

Sherman Kulick, who was a leader of the anti-parcel-tax drive in 1987 and who plans to oppose the new initiative, said the parcel tax is a poor substitute for adequate funding at the state level. In an interview, Kulick said Beverly Hills residents already are taxed by the city and state for public education, and that a school district parcel tax would mean triple taxation.

The district “has made no effort to hold the line on expenditures,” he said. The 4,700-student district spends more than $5,000 per pupil per year, more than any other unified district in Los Angeles County.

He said the solution is increased state funding of public schools. “I feel sorry for members of school board who face these problems,” he said. “It’s beyond the local school district. The problem comes from the state.”

In a counter-argument, Vice Mayor Allan Alexander agreed that additional state funds should be made available, “but they’re not, so we have to do it locally.”

“The quality of education is probably the most important element in our community, along with proper fire and police protection,” said Alexander, whose sons attend Beverly Hills High School. He said he and other City Council members will campaign for the tax.

Fenton said the tax is essential not only to a “quality school system” but to “a better quality of life, having your property values remain high and consistently go higher, having kids (develop) good citizenship and be well-educated.”

Kulick disagreed. Property values have increased even though the district enrollment has dropped, he said. “Either young people (with school-age children) are not moving in, or the ones that are are not sending their kids to the school district” but to private schools, he said. “If you’re buying a $5-million house, (you) can afford anything.”

School district parcel tax elections in California have a 37.5% success rate. Since 1983, 30 of the 80 such measures in the state have passed, according to Barbara Miller, research director of EdSource, an independent research organization in Northern California.

Among the communities that have approved them is Santa Monica, where voters twice approved a $58-a-parcel tax. Variable-rate taxes have passed in Berkeley and Piedmont in Northern California, where French was a former superintendent.

“This is going to be a tough, tough ordeal,” Fenton said at the board meeting.

“If you run for mayor, governor, president, 60% is considered a landslide,” he said in an interview. “We have to get 66 2/3.”