[img]1307|right|Meghan Sahli-Wells||no_popup[/img]Meghan Sahli-Wells, the mayor of Culver City, suspected she was going to be in for a wearying exercise last evening.
Bombed with 100 “Oppose Evolve” emails ahead of the City Council meeting, she quickly realized how strong and organized the opposition is to amending Prop. 13.
She heard not only from numerous Beverly Hills realtors, the Greater Los Angeles Apartment Assn., other realtors from around Los Angeles, and also from a lobbying base in Sacramento.
“The vast majority were not from Culver City,” Ms. Sahli-Wells said. “Many realtors are against raising taxes on commercial properties, which is what Evolve proposes.”
The planned Council discussion of radical changes to Prop. 13 never became airborne.
Ms. Sahli-Wells was the only one backing the change, and one of only two who even spoke. The advocacy group Evolve’s attempt to convince the Council to support their anti-business resolution never became airborne. There was neither a motion nor a vote.
Convinced that California businesses and corporations do not pay their fair share of taxes, Evolve is a young adult group advocating drastic changes in the structure of 13, knocking commercial properties out of the 1978 voter-approved law.
Ms. Sahli-Wells almost laughed at the amateurish quality of the “Oppose Evolve” emails. “Ninety-five percent of them were cut-and-paste,” she said.
As the mother of two young sons, she noted that 1978’s Prop. 13 “has been a disaster for California in terms of funding basic services.
“The proof is in the pudding. We keep having to go back to taxpayers and say, ‘We need to raise taxes for this service,’ ‘Will you give us bond money?’ and ‘Let’s do a parcel tax.’
“The argument,” said the mayor, “is that if we had stable, more reliable revenue from property taxes like every other state in the union, we would not have to keep going back to the voters every five years to fund schools.”
(To be continued)
