[img]2823|right|Ms. Laura Chardiet||no_popup[/img]Twenty-four hours after the City Council wordlessly turned thumbs down on a general, almost generic, proposal to slice Prop. 13 in half, the School Board last evening applied more polite treatment.
“Robust and civilized” is the way Board President Laura Chardiet described the discussion in which all five members appeared to cruise along in the same boat.
No vote was called for on amending Prop. 13.
Evolve, the Northern California group driving potential change in 13, did not attend the meeting.
Neither did the School Board back Evolve’s legislatively unpopular plan for dropping commercial properties from Prop. 13 protection. Under Evolve’s proposal, commercial property owners would lose the benefits of 13, pay taxes at the rates of all other states. The enhanced revenue stream would be channeled into educational funding.
Starting softly, the School Board – Kathy Paspalis, Sue Robins, Nancy Goldberg, Dr. Steve Levin and Ms. Chardiet – unanimously agreed public education in the state is deeply underfunded.
The tickle at the moment is, “there is no consensus – from the Board or from the audience — how that problem should be resolved,” Ms. Chardiet said.
“The conclusion of the Board was that it is up to our state Legislature to solve these funding problems and to come up with a plan. We are going to write a letter to our representatives (Assemblymember Sebastian Ridley-Thomas and Sen. Holly Mitchell) and ask them to come up with a plan.
An Evolve-style proposal for reshaping Prop. 13 already has failed once in Sacramento.
The School Board also endorsed a still unshaped plan for closing a loophole around alleged abuse of property reassessment laws by owners of commercial land.
