Knight-Errant Helps Puncture Taxing Dragon : Mello-Roos: When Rande King found he was paying to build a school already paid for, he went into action. School trustees kill the tax but give their own reason.

IRVINE —  When Rande King found out last year that he was paying the school district $219.39 a year to build a school that had already been paid for, he launched a one-man crusade.

He wrote letters. He appeared before the Irvine school board. And he distributed neon flyers to about 800 neighbors seeking their help in his campaign to kill the tax.

On Tuesday, the 43-year-old King declared victory. The school board of the Irvine Unified School District voted unanimously to abolish the tax, nine months after King’s campaign began. Local and state officials said they believe that it is the first time such a tax has ever been eliminated.

As King left the board meeting, about 45 neighbors offered congratulatory handshakes, and some suggested that he run for mayor. The campaign he had begun alone in April had developed a following.

The tax was imposed in 1985, when the school board created a “Mello-Roos” tax district to build and furnish Brywood Elementary School in the Northwood community, which was beginning to expand.

State law allows local governments, in cooperation with developers, to create such districts on undeveloped land, taxing future property owners there for roads, schools and other needed facilities. The law also avoids the two-thirds majority vote for taxes mandated under Proposition 13 in 1978.

Although the tax allowed the Irvine district to borrow up to $15 million, the district borrowed only about $5.6 million to keep the tax for new residents low, Deputy Supt. Paul H. Reed said.

The loans for Brywood were paid in full in 1990, Reed said, but the district wanted to keep the tax in place--at a reduced level--to raise money for the school’s long-term maintenance.

King, an investigator for the Department of Motor Vehicles, said he got angry when he learned last year that the loans for the school had been paid but that the tax remained. He spent hours reading the original text of the law and researching Irvine Unified’s records authorizing the tax.

Although his tax bill had dropped to $219 from the original $500, King said, the Mello-Roos law was meant only to build facilities, not maintain them.

“They were continuing this tax beyond the limits of its authority,” King said.

In April, he argued his point before the school board, which agreed to research the legality of the tax. In June, armed with an attorney’s opinion that the school district may maintain the tax to pay for future upgrades such as new air conditioning and carpeting, the board refused King’s request to abolish the district.

Instead of giving up, King began circulating flyers, urging his neighbors to stand behind him at school board meetings.

“I do have perseverance,” King said. “When I found out it was wrong, I just stuck with it. I think after my first assault in April, they were hoping I would go away.”

Instead, King kept writing letters and appeared before the school board again in November and again on Tuesday, backed by dozens of his neighbors opposed to the tax.

“That’s what it takes,” King said, “a lot of people getting angry. The (Mello-Roos) law was formed for a good purpose . . . but they just expanded it beyond its original purpose.”

School board members said they voted to kill the tax because it was unfair but for a different reason than King’s. Not all residents of the area near Brywood were part of the taxing district but benefited from the school, board member Gregory Smith said in suggesting that the board kill the tax.

King’s victory probably won’t signal anti-Mello-Roos campaigns across the state. In creating Mello-Roos districts to fund facilities for new homes, most local governments borrowed millions of dollars in 20- or 25-year loans, said Stephen Shea, director of policy research for the California Debt Advisory Commission.

As long as debt remains on those loans, the Mello-Roos district cannot be abolished, Shea said.

“It creates no precedent,” Reed said. The school district’s only other Mello-Roos district, spanning 17,000 acres, has borrowed $37 million and has been authorized to borrow up to $150 million, he said. The tax district must remain until those debts are paid, he said.