School District to Put Parcel Tax on Ballot : Education: Board says assessment is needed to restore quality and to attract and keep teachers. Senior citizens would be exempt from the tax.

CULVER CITY — The Culver City school board voted unanimously this week to put a $98-per-property parcel tax on the November ballot to raise money for the financially strapped district.

In putting the tax before voters, the Culver City Unified School District joins neighboring Santa Monica and Beverly Hills and dozens of districts around the state. The tax, levied for five years, would raise about $1.1 million a year. Senior citizens would be exempt.

About 120 parents, teachers, children and residents filled the board meeting at Linwood E. Howe School auditorium Tuesday, some of them holding placards that read “Don’t Suspend Prop 98--Support the Parcel Tax for $98” and “We Can Afford $1.18 a Week.”

A succession of speakers--including former board members, the teachers union president and members of the Chamber of Commerce--spoke in favor of the tax, saying it is necessary to restore the quality of education and to attract and keep teachers.

“I moved to Culver City because we had great schools, and we couldn’t afford Beverly Hills,” former City Councilman Richard Alexander said. “We must pass the parcel tax. We must somehow help you people reverse the lunacy this state has entered into” with its revenue cuts to local districts.

Culver City teacher salaries rank 40th out of the 43 unified districts in Los Angeles County, and at least three teachers left at the beginning of the school year for the higher pay in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Culver City Supt. Curtis E. Rethmeyer said. About 20 years ago, before Proposition 13 limited property taxes and before enrollment began declining, teacher pay in Culver City ranked third in the county.

To grapple with a $2-million deficit next year, the board has authorized laying off 30 of the district’s 280 teachers, counselors and school administrators, and additional staff cuts among instructional aides, food service workers, custodians and clerks, amounting to 53 full-time posts. The budget is estimated to be $15 million. The district does not have an estimated budget for the 1992-93 school year, Rethmeyer said.

The parcel tax would have to be approved by two-thirds of the voters, and would be levied beginning in July, 1992.

A survey of voters last fall found that 51% of those polled would definitely or probably vote for a $145-per-parcel tax and 43% would vote no. If senior citizens were made exempt, 54% said they’d vote yes and 40% said no.

The survey found a 53%-to-42% division if the proposed tax was $98, but the survey did not present the senior exemption as an option at the $98 level.

There are more than 11,000 parcels in the city, but officials do not know how many are owned by the estimated 3,500 senior citizens.

Some residents questioned the senior exemption. One speaker, former City Manager Walter Harris, argued that to exempt the elderly would, in effect, “exempt (them) from responsibility for educating our youth,” and would set a bad precedent.

“This exemption narrows down to a tactic to win an election. . . . If you can’t win them over, buy them out with an exemption,” he said.

School board member Julie Lugo Cerra said she had doubts about the exemption and said she would prefer one based on income. Supt. Rethmeyer said, however, that state law only allows exemptions from parcel taxes to senior citizens.

But Cerra also noted that Beverly Hills’ parcel tax attempt in 1990 failed, by four votes, in part because of the large contingent of senior citizens there who have no children in the schools. A revived Beverly Hills parcel tax proposal, once again with no exemption for the elderly, goes back before voters on June 4.

Cerra and board President Robert Knopf, who also objected to the exemption, voted for the formula to make a showing of unanimity.

The pro-tax campaign faces no organized opposition as yet and will probably spend no more than $30,000 on its campaign, said Diane Pannone, chairwoman of the Save Culver Schools committee.