Schools to poll Scotts Valley voters on parcel tax

Scotts Valley Unified School District trustees decided this week to poll voters for a second time before putting a parcel tax measure on the ballot.
At the meeting Tuesday, Dec. 13, the board authorized Superintendent Penny Weaver to hire a polling firm for as much as $10,000 to conduct the survey about the tax.
Larry Beaman, who has been appointed president of the board for a second consecutive year, said trustees want to know for sure what the community will accept for the duration and amount of the tax, as well as the timing of the election.
“Where I am coming from is trust,” Beaman said. “The district has definitely changed over the past year, and our interface with the community has changed. Right now, we have trust on our side.”
Beaman pointed to hiring a new superintendent, the work the board has done to get information out to the people, and fiscally conservative spending that has allowed the district to remain solvent, as several reasons voters can trust the district and its decision makers.
“We’ve slimmed down to barebones, skeleton operations,” he said.
A polling firm would survey voters over the telephone, asking if they would prefer a mail-in ballot in May or a vote at the polling place during the June presidential primary.
The district polled voters a year ago, but Beaman said some of the other trustees suspect that year-old polling data will not hold true today.
“(The district) had two bond measures that failed,” Beaman said. “It would be three strikes (if this measure fails).”
The district must file all the paperwork by Feb. 10 if leaders hope to put it on a May 8 mail-in ballot or on the June 5 presidential primary ballot.
The district has developed the first draft of a parcel tax measure that will likely go before Scotts Valley voters sometime in 2012.
Trustees have been working on the proposal for the past year as they seek to find a way to make up for drastic cuts in educational funding at the state level. A parcel tax, according to the measure, would allow for a stable source of locally controlled funding.
Beaman said the trustees hope to have the results of the poll available at their Jan. 10 meeting.
Highlights of the parcel tax proposal
**The tax would be for three, four or five years, for parcels within the Scotts Valley Unified School District.
**Trustees have not yet decided on an amount. Based on past discussions, it is likely to fall between $48 per parcel and more than $100 per parcel.
**Seniors and those who receive government disability benefits would have the option of exempting themselves from the tax.
**The tax would be used only to pay direct costs for classroom teachers for maintaining math, science, reading and writing skills, and to retain teachers and prevent further class-size increases.
**Proceeds from the tax could not be used for administrator salaries or benefits, capital improvements, operational expenses or salary and benefits for non-classroom workers.