On a regular basis, we will be publishing letters from residents to residents in the edition we call “MB Residents Speak…” If you have information or an opinion, and you would like to share it with your MB neighbors, please email your letter to MBStrong2021@gmail.com.
Proposed Manhattan Beach Tax
Any person in Manhattan Beach who supports Measure A must have fallen on their head.
Seriously, the city of Manhattan Beach has an annual budget of $133 million, and if we cannot support the school system with that kind of budget, then we are doing something very wrong.
Measure A will expect each household to pay an additional $1,095 per year for twelve years and increase each year for inflation, which could mean (knowing how governments work) that by 2025 we might be paying an additional $4000 each year.
Per the MBUSD website, “it would also require an independent oversight committee to review expenditures to ensure parcel tax revenue and use it only for the purpose set for in the initiative”... which means more money spent on Measure A.
Most MB schools have had major renovations in recent years. New gyms, new fields, and new classrooms.
I came to Manhattan Beach in 1965 and attended American Martyrs, a school that gets no funding from the city but relies on tuition, donation, and other fees.
Perhaps MBUSD and the city of MB can take a lesson from the private school to see how it is done. It is absurd that we need more money. And you know any “temporary tax” will turn into a permanent tax. Just look at income tax.
I’m with William Hicks (the author of a letter to the editor of The Beach Reporter) and am just mind-boggled that we need another tax to raise more money for the #32 most expensive zip code in the country.
No to Measure A.
Helena Burke - resident of MB for 57 years
Letter originally published in The Beach Reporter on 4/14/22 and republished here with the permission of Ms. Burke.
Parcel Tax application is a presumptuous insult
“Fait accompli. An accomplished fact; a thing is already done. Ex: The enemy's defeat was a fait accompli long before the formal surrender.”
Obviously, MBUSD Business Services/Parcel Tax and parcel tax@mbusd.org believe they have accomplished a Measure A fait accompli and so control the vote in our city that they could confidently spend funds from some unknown source (perhaps some of that $49,999 we donated to MBEF meant to support our kids but was misappropriated, taken away from the children, and used instead to help fund this political scheme?) to send out their already-printed, bright ‘n shiny, Measure A “Senior Citizen Exemption Application” last week; whereon it is demanding even before the vote that all applications are “due on or before July 1, 2022, for the tax year 2022/23”.
Unless we are mistaken and the June 7th election is rigged, we, the people, have not yet spoken so perhaps MBUSD needs to cool their jets, wait to see what the voters say and stop counting their ungotten millions. I, for one, am a child of survivors of The Great Depression, The Dust Bowl, AND WWII. Like my parents, I am not given to crumbling under and surrendering to pressure.
-A Disgusted MB Homeowner
Below - Exempt Application mailed to every MB Senior Citizen:
Below - Marketing material inserted with the application:
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