Evolve, a heavily student-driven group that described itself more imaginatively the last time it visited Culver City, may be in for a disappointment at this evening’s 7 o’clock City Council meeting.
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They have been trying for years to chop Prop. 13 in half. Evolve’s resolution would eliminate retailers and other commercial properties from the sumptuous benefits of the huge 1978 anti-tax initiative.
Two members – Vice Mayor Mehaul O’Leary and Councilman Jeff Cooper — indicated this morning they will not agree to sign onto tghe resolution.
“The language in the resolution is ambiguous,” Mr. Cooper told the newspaper. “I will not be supporting our Council to take any action.”
Three months ago, on July 28, Evolve convinced the Council to explore the possibility of signing on to its anti-business proposal.
“I am surprised the Prop. 13 discussion is even on the agenda,” Vice Mayor O’Leary said. “I don’t recall having been asked to agendize it. I know on occasion (Mayor Meghan Sahli Wells) has asked at midnight or 1 in the morning for something to be agendized for discussion. It may have been one of those that drew three lazy nodding heads. That is my assumption.”
Mr. O’Leary, a business owner with two localities, said that when Prop. 13 was implemented 36 years ago, “it had a trickle-down effect of changes in taxation and changes in structure to compensate for the loss of revenue that Prop. 13 created.
“To undo 13 would have to undo a whole series of other taxes.
“A change in taxing for commercial property owners, we all know, means they would pass the changes along to their customers,” Mr. O’Leary said.
Which way will he swing?
“I don’t want to pre-empt what my colleagues will say,” said the vice mayor. “But I can’t imagine any argument they can make that will want to make me sign on to the resolution.”
Perhaps it was Evolve member Andrea Chu’s plea that Evolve “is a local non-profit” that moved Council members to assent to a discussion.
Evolve only is local in Culver City if those doing the counting stretch their imaginations to include San Francisco, a scant 428 miles away, as being within the Culver City border limits.
Home Is Where?
It is not known if the “local non-profit” will be chided this evening for its misleading geography lesson.
For almost four years, Evolve has been campaigning to eliminate commercial properties from the benefits of Prop. 13.
Evolve members have been driving up and down the state trying to sell the anti-business initiative to communities on the grounds retailers are not paying their fair share of taxes.
With their degree of headway unclear, Evolve hopes to repeal the half of 13, which: • Rolled back assessed property values to what they were worth in 1975.
• Decreed that property values cannot increase more than 2 percent per year.
• Capped property tax is capped at 1 percent.
• Declared that property is only reassessed upon change of ownership or new construction.
• Mandated that all local and state taxes need a two-thirds majority vote.
