The Mountain View-Whisman School Board is trying to get a $2.5 million parcel tax measure passed in Mountain View at an election this coming June.
The school district (which has not, curiously, updated its web site with any information on this issue) is facing, like many California schools, crushing budget cuts because of the enormous California budget shortfall. Their solution is to try for a rather unique parcel tax: unlike many such measures, which tax some fixed dollar amount per parcel of land, this one taxes 5 cents per square foot on buildings and property improvements for each of the following five years.
The result of this is that businesses will end up footing an incredible portion of the bill. Articles in the Mountain View Voice 3/14 and 3/21 issues have noted that SGI, Microsoft, and HP combined will probably end up paying over $97,000 each year -- almost 4% of the total.
From the standpoint of wanting to pass the tax, I can understand the strategy of the school board. By forcing businesses to bear the lion's share of the tax, individual residents will have a much lower tax burden and are, therefore, more likely to vote for the measure. Large businesses tend to have a lot of people who live outside of Mountain View, and therefore can't vote on the issue (for example, I'm hard pressed to think of anyone else that I work with here at Microsoft who actually lives in Mountain View).
The articles mention the polling of 400 Mountain View residents about the tax before the school board placed it on the measure. I was one of those polled. The questions were about whether I would support the tax, whether I agreed that schools were having financial problems, how I would want the money spent, and, finally, a series of 'would you be more likely to vote for / no more likely to vote for the measure if X were included'. Note that 'less likely' wasn't a choice I was given. An interesting choice in polling methodology.
Do the ends justify the means? I don't think that businesses should be devoid of any fiscal responsibility to the communities in which they are based, but having just three companies pay 1/25 of the total bill, and not give those companies any real chance to have a voice in the issue, seems like taxation without representation at its worst. Further, having the tax paid so disproportionately seems fiscally foolish -- what happens to the school district's funding if one of those companies closes a building in the next five years?
In the end, I am torn. I do think the schools need more money to function at even basic levels. But I am alarmed by what seems to be a 'whatever it takes to pass it' mentality of the measure's backers. I could have supported a parcel tax measure, but I'm not sure that I can support this particular measure.
They need some serious cash, bro. And, while I agree that the Machiavellian strategy they're using is a little sketchy, I also know that it could prevent some bigtime teacher layoffs. Support my sisters and brothers in arms. Vote yes on the parcel tax. Don't make me get all Lysistrata on yo butt.
Look it up.