Trustees Reject Athletics Tax in Escondido : Education: School board kills innovative plan that would have raised money for high school facilities by placing assessments on nearby property.

The Escondido Union High School District voted unanimously Tuesday to kill an innovative fund-raising proposal for athletic facilities that would have imposed a tax on residents near the district’s high schools.

The proposed assessment, which would have been the first tax of its kind by a California school district, would have generated $1.4 million a year by placing a tax of $45 on each of 31,666 parcels that lie within 3 miles of a district high school.

“The fairness issue is what bothered me,” said board member Charlotte Hotchkiss, referring to the fact that the tax would not have gone before voters. “I felt that it was good to look into the idea, but it’s not the way to go.”

The money, which would have been raised under the state Landscaping and Lighting Act of 1972, would have gone toward installing and maintaining athletic facilities such as basketball and tennis courts, soccer fields, handball courts and football bleachers at the district’s three high schools.

“Now it’s back to business as usual, with tennis courts in disrepair, not enough racquetball courts and tracks that are not maintained well,” a disappointed Supt. Jane Gawronski said after the vote. “We’ll just have to continue with inadequate facilities.”

Board members pleaded with the audience, almost all of which opposed the proposed tax, to support a general-obligation bond in a future election.

Gawronski, however, conceded that most if not all of those in attendance would have opposed any tax-raising measure for school funds.

School districts throughout San Diego County and the state had been watching to see how the Escondido district proceeded, since no other school district has collected money from such an assessment before.

“There is high interest in the applicability of that act, not just in San Diego County, but especially in Southern California, where high growth is occurring,” said Tom Robinson, director of facilities planning services at the San Diego County Office of Education.

But the proposal met bitter opposition from some residents, who felt the tax would be regressive and that the improvements would not benefit them.

“Why should some taxpayers in the district pay the brunt of this proposal and others none?” Escondido resident Henry Johnson asked the board.

School officials favored the plan because it would have allowed them to raise funds without going through costly and risky elections--the traditional way school districts have raised money--which must garner a two-thirds majority to pass.

“This would have been much easier than a general-obligation bond,” Gawronski said. “A bond election is much more costly, much more time-consuming and much more iffy.”

An assessment under the Landscaping and Lighting Act may be approved by the school board itself, without voter approval. Use of the funds is restricted to recreational purposes. The school board on its own determines whether half its constituents are in favor of the assessment simply through community input.

Use of the act is not obscure: Many cities in the state, including Escondido, as well as other agencies, such as fire and water districts, use it to finance landscaping and lighting improvements in specific areas.

School districts, although not excluded from using the act, have never attempted to do so. However, budget constraints and the restrictions in raising funds imposed by 1978’s Proposition 13 have forced them to look for new sources of revenue.

Just last month, trustees of the Kern High School District in Bakersfield, facing stiff community opposition, backed down and decided not to continue with a similar assessment district. The district would have assessed property owners less than $1 a month for school improvements.

Officials in the Kern district, where just last year voters approved a $97-million bond to build six high schools, said tax increases simultaneously proposed by other city entities spelled the demise of the school’s proposal.

“We think that, absent some of these other issues, that we probably would have been a little better off,” said Neal Olsen, associate superintendent for the district.

Opponents of Escondido Union High’s plan had circulated petitions against the proposal and claimed to have gathered 1,300 signatures.

They argued that the proposal would have circumvented the voters and that many of the people who would have been taxed would not have benefited from the improvements. Some objected to raising money for athletic facilities when other needs in the schools are going unmet, while other contended that assessing the same tax on parcels of different value is unfair.

“I think the whole premise that the school district is using is illegal. It does not meet the criteria set by the state for an assessment district,” said Douglas Harrison, a member of the newly formed Escondido Taxpayers Coalition.

Harrison’s son Craig, an environmental lawyer, wrote an opinion saying the proposed assessment included “a strained distortion of the English language to deem a football stadium to be ‘playground equipment’ or a gymnasium to be a ‘play court.’ ”

Escondido school officials believed that improvements to facilities already widely used by the community, such as basketball courts and soccer fields, would have benefited people in those communities.

School finance experts said that for the school to turn to the act as a source of financing was not an easy way out, since the district had to show that the people being taxed would benefit from the improvements to fields and courts. While it is easy for a city to show the benefit of curbs or sewers to specific parcels, it is harder to show the community benefit of, say, a basketball court.