High school board puts bond on ballot

Mike Swanson

The Huntington Beach Union High School District will ask voters to

pass a $228-million bond in March to renovate the grounds of its

aging schools.

The board voted 4 to 1 Tuesday night, with Trustee Mathew Harper

dissenting, to place the measure on the March 4 ballot.

The district spent thousands on a campaign in 1999 trying to pass

measure A, a $123-million bond to pay for school repairs that many

say are long overdue. The 1999 measure garnered 61.3% of the public’s

vote, just shy of the two-thirds necessary. But the $228-million 2004

measure that hits the polls in March will only require 55% support

because the district will use an oversight committee, board member

Brian Garland said.

The $228 million would renovate all of the district’s nine

campuses and include new construction at Huntington Beach, Ocean View

and Westminster high schools, board member Michael Simons said.

Huntington Beach High School, built in 1925, is the oldest school in

the district.

“What this bond measure will do is bring our schools into the 21st

century,” Trustee Bonnie Castrey said. “Life has changed so much

since the ‘20s -- or ‘50s and ‘60s, in some of the schools’ cases --

and we need to bring our children’s facilities up to date.”

Simons said he expects the measure to pass next year in the high

60% range, but added that any time the public is asked to give a

substantial amount of their money in taxes, nothing is certain.

The proposal calls for taxpayers to give $30 per $100,000 of

assessed valuation of their properties. Measure A asked for $27 per

$100,000, Simons said.

“If someone has a house worth $400,000, they’d give $120 for the

year to our schools,” Garland said. “On top of everything else, it

adds up, but we’re hoping our community gives back to the schools

many of its members attended.”

Harper was the only board member who didn’t support the measure,

saying that the district clearly needed to commit more resources to

its facilities, but that the measure wasn’t an adequate solution to

the problem.

Harper questioned the method of the board’s selection process for

the oversight committee and whether the committee’s use should lower

the two-thirds majority of voters needed to approve the bond. When

Proposition 39 passed in 2000, it allowed school boards to lower the

necessary vote from two-thirds to 55% with the use of an oversight

committee, which Garland said will consist of about 10 members of the

community.

“It’s not a requirement that the use of an oversight committee

lower the percentage, it’s an option,” Harper said. “Voters in our

region didn’t support Proposition 39 even though it passed statewide,

and I think we’re doing a disservice to our voters in lowering the

percentage.”

California voters passed Proposition 39 with 53% of the vote in

2000, but Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Westminster and Orange

County all voted against it.

Harper supports a bond measure for the district, but thinks the

2004 measure is inferior to the 1999 measure.

“If the voters choose this one, then I will support it, but I hope

that if it does fail, we’ll go back to what we had in ’99 when we try

again,” Harper said. “It usually takes about 30 years to pay off a

bond, and I’m afraid we’ll put ourselves in a situation where we keep

needing another bond as soon as we pay off the old one. That’s not

good for the taxpayers.”

Renovations and construction at the district’s campuses are major,

Castrey said, and neglecting them is only hurting the students.

“We need to get rid of our swarm of extension cords and bring our

sites up to speed,” Castrey said. “The great education’s still there,

but our students deserve the facilities necessary to match the

quality of teaching.”

If this bond measure passes, the district will likely never have

to take their renovating needs to the public again, Castrey said.

“Edison’s considered one of our newer schools, and it’s 34 years

old,” said Garland, a first-year board member who was principal at

Edison for 14 years and on the Huntington Beach City School District

board for 25 years before retiring. “We need to get this done.”

* MIKE SWANSON covers education and crime. He can be reached at

(714) 965-7177 or mike.swanson@latimes.com.