Culver City : School Subsidies to Resume

The Culver City Redevelopment Agency has agreed to resume paying the Culver City Unified School District an annual subsidy to defray costs to the schools resulting from the agency’s residential developments, according to agency director Jody Hall-Esser.

In addition, the agency will give the district $2.2 million for remodeling the district’s headquarters at 4034 Irving Place and for other capital improvements, Hall-Esser said. The money, originally budgeted for the new City Hall construction, became available when the district declined the city’s offer to relocate to the new city facilities.

“This ($2.2 million) is the amount that would have been our portion of that civic center project,” said Board of Education President Linda Price. She said that besides remodeling the headquarters, the district needs to repair plumbing, bathrooms and sprinkler systems at the schools.

The annual subsidies, which will begin in early fall, will be $150,000 a year through 1992-93, and about $700,000 a year thereafter, according to Hall-Esser.

The subsidies can be used for capital improvements and operating costs, such as salaries, and are part of an agreement that dates to the early 1970s. The agency agreed to help pay the district for serving the new students who would be brought in from the agency’s condominium and apartment projects, such as those near Overland Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard, Hall-Esser said.

The payments stopped after Proposition 13, which cut the agency’s share of property taxes. Since then, with completion of many agency developments, tax revenues are up again and the agency can resume the annual subsidies to the district, Hall-Esser said.