It appears here that the District and their lobbyists were pandering to the voters who reside within PUSD to get this obscure deal passed. I could understand the need to build new schools in the newer areas and that is what the MR is for.
But if you don’t have the money to remodel old schools and the taxpayers don’t want to pay to have them remodeled, you can’t. Parents living in the older areas of PUSD don’t pay MR so they shouldn’t expect to have top-notch, state-of-the-art schools for their kids. To be frank, highly experienced teachers are worth far more to students than the buildings they are learning in.
I don’t believe a very high percentage of property owners residing in PUSD are still protected by Prop 13 and thus have artificially low property taxes. I believe they are likely in the low single digits. I was in Poway for a wedding in the 1970’s and not only was there no civilization whatsoever for over 8 miles between the (newly-constructed) I-15 and Poway, the town itself was very small. PQ and RB were in the PUSD District at the time and were situated close to I-15 with one exit to each community with the later addition of Carmel Mtn Rd. I can’t imagine more than 1-2 developments in each (92128 and 92129) which predated April 1978. Except for RB, Poway and PQ aren’t really “retirement havens” and thus the vast majority of those owners buying in the 1970’s are very likely long gone.
I would guess the entire PUSD had +/- 8K students back then.
So, in sum, the PUSD and other fast-growing school districts in CA’s outer suburbs have to operate within their means.
Our children and grandchildren will NOT buy into these subdivisions if the taxes are raised to begin making payments on these bonds as the tax rate could very well exceed 3% of assessed value for the District to collect enough money to begin even a slow amortization of this MONSTROUS loan.
And why should they? These *new* and *remodeled* schools the Districts are borrowing for today will be worn out by the time our grandchildren and great-grandchildren attend them!
My take on this is that the District was pandering to parents’ extremely high expectations during the 2008 election season. They didn’t want to put a taxpayer cost on it because newer tracts in the PUSD have among the highest MR in the state, thus an additional $60-$100 per $100K of assessed value was unpalatable and the district couldn’t legally just charge property owners in the older sections for the bonds. Knowing as many native San Diegans as I do, I can safely say that an inland outer-suburb (such as Poway) is not exactly a “destination place” for a SD native. For this reason, I believe the PUSD has far more transplants and relocatees than the older, larger local districts, only because it was so small 35+ years ago and grew by 400-500% since then. Many (most?) of these families moved into the PUSD from the “flyover states” which all have weather-related issues. Thus their schools are all indoor (with no rusty lockers, drinking fountains and lunch tables), multi-story with auditoriums and indoor cafeterias, mostly brick and many have state-of-the-art modern classrooms for which 6-8 can be opened up into one big classroom for seminars. Many also have indoor pools and professional playing fields and track areas, etc. These families move to CA wanting the same thing and see some or most of it in a district such as PUSD so gravitate there but that’s not representative of 95% of CA’s school districts.
Due to ignorance, these thousands of transplant-homeowners in the PUSD fail to consider that they may have been paying property taxes equal to 1.7% – 2.7% of assessed value of their properties situated in the locale they left behind. And, to my knowledge, no other state but CA has a “Prop 13-like” measure on its books. Assessors in other states can reassess at whim if there has been a housing boom. And they often DO. These reassessments often greatly exceed the 2% of assessed value pursuant to CA’s Prop 13.
So these out-of-state school districts have a lot more income at their disposal to build/rehab schools than most CA districts do (those w/o MR infusion).
From the well-established Mendocino Co to Marin Co to SF thru the Silicon Valley, Monterey and Santa Barbara Co, down to the affluent communities of West LA and the OC, 95% of the public schools in coastal CA are older “outdoor campuses” (but perhaps-remodeled at some point). They all seem to be “good enough” for families who reside in communities where the RE is 2-12 times the value of the avg SFR in the PUSD. Why should it be different for the residents of newer inland subdivisions who are not paying MR?
In a nutshell, transplants to CA newer inland subdivisions have too high of expectations for their children’s physical school facilities. In the absence of those residents voting themselves to be charged annually (on their tax bills) for construction bonds, the “expectations” of these parents cannot and should not be fulfilled.
PUSD should have never, ever have taken out a capital improvement loan of this magnitude and with these terms. By their incompetent foolishness, they screwed themselves, and, down the road, their taxpayers.
Now that this news has reached the national level, I predict that a lot of homeowners will list their properties ASAP before the PUSD is strongly advised to begin making principle payments on their subprime “capital appreciation” loan and thus, asks the assessor to raise property taxes to do it. Much higher tax rates could easily reduce the property values within the PUSD.
Has anyone looked at the “Prop C” fine print? Does anyone know if it allows the District to begin taxing if they get into a pinch on his loan or feel they won’t be able to pay it?
