School Board Races to Get Ready for Fall Ballot

By Ann K. Williams
Staff Writer

April 10 -- Racing against fast-approaching deadlines, the School Board moved another step closer last week toward placing a facilities bond on the November ballot.

Without formally committing to a bond effort, the board last Thursday night asked staff to come back in May with an action item that will fast-track steps leading up to a ballot measure.

Its decision builds on the momentum of recent community meetings in which district consultants asked parents, students and local leaders to “think big” as they brainstormed new school facilities.

“Part of the drive for a facilities master plan was to go for this 2006 bond,” Vice-President Kathy Wisnicki told the board Thursday. (see story)

“We have spent considerable time and energy on the facilities master plan,” Wisnicki said. “If we are going to wait until 2010 (to ask voters to approve a facilities bond), then this information is going to be outdated.”

But the November election places school officials on a tight timeline. A ballot statement and a list of concrete objectives will have to make it to the County Registrar by August 11, 88 days before voters go to the polls.

That gives the board just three months from its next meeting in May to conduct a voter survey, compile the results of the master plan workshops into a list of projects and prepare a ballot measure, a team of experts and potential consultants explained.

And a citizens’ task force will have to campaign for money and support for the ballot measure before the November 7 election.

Advocates told the board the extra effort will pay off.

A bond measure this fall would only need 55 percent of the vote to pass, not the usual two-thirds majority for parcel taxes and other bonds, said Paul Silvern, chair of the citizens’ Financial Oversight Committee, which supports a bond.

And under the terms of Proposition 39, if a local bond passes this fall, the district will be able to apply for matching funds from a State bond likely to be on the same ballot, according to district Chief Financial Officer Winston A. Braham.

The district can wait until 2010 to float a similar bond. But if it does, it will have “lost momentum from the Facilities Master Plan," Silvern said. "Things will have changed.”

Falling enrollment may make it hard for local schools to qualify for matching state funds, he warned. But that just makes it even more imperative that the district secures its revenues with voter-approved monies.

The possibility of losing out on State funds places “even a greater premium on having our own resources,” Silvern said.

The experts’ vision didn't stop at next fall’s election. The two parcel taxes funding the schools, Measure S and Measure Y, expire at the end of June in 2009 and 2011 respectively. The district can ask voters to renew them in June, 2008, they said.

Before committing to a plan of action, though, the advisors urged the board to hire a polling firm to find out what Santa Monica and Malibu voters want and how much they are willing to pay for it.

With staff and FOC help, John Fairbanks said his opinion research company could have a community survey ready within weeks of the board’s go-ahead.

“It’s very important that you get a clear read on voter sentiment,” Silvern urged the board. “You have to know right away what level of support there is.”

Experts and school officials weren’t shy about discussing the need to finesse the politics of asking Santa Monica and Malibu residents for more money.

“There’s a lot of politics” that go into converting the community’s wish-lists into the “politically acceptable phraseology” of a school bond, advised David Casnocha, an attorney who specializes in school district finance.

And Braham referred to the “psychographics of the voters” when he talked about an extension of the parcel taxes, calling it “more palatable” than a bond.

Still, he is a strong supporter of November’s bond and anticipates that the district “will get a real solid sense of what the community expects” at the next Facilities Master Plan meeting on April 29.

After hearing from the experts, the board asked district staff to return with an action item that will allow it to approve a community survey, a timeline and cost estimates for a ballot measure and to hire more consultants.

The board will vote on the action item at its next meeting on Thursday, May 4 at 5:30 in the Malibu City Council Chambers at 23815 Stuart Ranch Road in Malibu. The agendas for board meetings are posted by the Monday before the meeting at www.smmusd.org

The public will get another chance to the weigh in on the facilities master plan at the next workshop on Saturday, April 29 from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Santa Monica High School.