A brief update to our subscribers:
Over the last 45 days, we have issued 21 newsletters covering Measure A and we have received 65,479 views of these newsletters. More residents have become better informed on this issue because you all have forwarded our newsletters. A better informed resident is a better informed voter.
Continue to share our newsletters and please continue to submit your opinions and your research on Measure A so we can publish them to be read by fellow MB residents.
Serving our beach city,
~MBStrong
Analysis of the Parcel Tax from a retired Administrative Judge/Lawyer
Dear Fellow MB Residents:
Measure A, dishonesty is thy name.
First, IT’S A BAD TAX. I read its language in its entirety, as everyone should. After doing so, I received a “Yes on A” flyer and an “Exemption Application.” In the said letter, the “Yes on A” people made a promise of automatic exemption renewal for 12 years.
Although I have been eligible for exemption on a previous school fee measure for 3 years now, this is the first time I’ve had the “Exemption Application” mailed to me. This is an obvious bribe to our wise and experienced residents to either vote “Yes” and be selfish because it will only affect their neighbors, OR – more deviously – not to vote at all, making it easier to get a 50% +1 voter approval.
The flyer lied. Measure A language requires an annual re-application for the exemption (see “Sixth” below for full warning on this deception). The “wise and experienced folks” see this bribery attempt for what it is. We do not like Pro-A forces dumping unwarranted taxes on our neighbors mercilessly while trying to hush us up.
I hope everyone will vote but you must know what you are voting for in Measure A!
I reference the Measure A language/sections here in parenthesis ( ).
Second, is this a teachers union initiative? It should be! Just read it. It’s all about increasing teacher and administrator salaries and benefits. It has virtually nothing to help students!
It lists eight uses for the funds (8.40.040 (C) 1-8), seven of which are solely about increasing pay and perks and new positions for teachers, staff, and administrators. The 8th is about paying an oversight board, selected solely by politicians.
It creates a slush fund for “political cronies” (8.40.040 (C) 8). NO objective standards for picking oversight members are listed, and all positions are appointed by politicians, seemingly at their whim. I’ll give you dimes to dollars that every appointee will be a supporter of the teachers union, in exchange for union votes — the devils deal (8.40.080).
Please note the “Yes on A” flyers mailed to us, as well as the Senior Exemption Forms, are printed on “union” paper! The unions are behind these flyers.
Third, this is a spending plan, not a budget increase. They plan to spend all the money! No benchmarks or performance goals are required. Just spend the money. Unions love this type of tax.
MBUSD already pays some of the highest public school employee salaries in the country, right up there with the Beverly Hills School District. This is known as a grab bag.
There is no definition of what ‘good use’ of funds looks like, therefore no one can say what the ‘misuse’ of funds is either. They are protected from correction of ineptitude or prosecution for dishonesty.
Forth, it’s a HUGE tax/fee (non-ad Valorem assessments are ‘fees’ not taxes). $1,095 is a non-tax-deductible annual fee that will increase each year with inflation. It’s guaranteed to go up to $1,190 next year, and $95 higher the year after that, and on and on for 12 years (8.40.030 (B).
It’s three times higher than the tax recommended by the District’s own study conducted last fall, with no stated reason for the large amount, nor any objective goals to which it applies (see comments on the teachers union above).
Fifth, the Measure sneaks in an automatic increase in the City's spending! It bypasses the safeguards which require public hearings before any increased budget spending by the City of Manhattan Beach (8.40.070).
Sixth, a warning to seniors and the disabled: you WILL be forced to renew your exemption each and every year (the recent Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, issued by City Council notwithstanding).
If you forget, you will have to pay the tax, then file a lengthy and costly appeal to receive a refund (8.40.030 (E)). There is NO automatic exemption in the language of the Measure. It “…must be renewed annually” (8.40.030 (F) (G)). This is a burden upon the poor seniors and the disabled who need that money to live on.
The “Yes on A” authors count on the elderly forgetting to file the extension by requiring an annual re-application. (8.40.030 (F) (G)). Otherwise, they would have written a one-time exemption into the language of the Measure since no one who qualifies for the Senior Exemption will become any younger thereafter. Measure A deliberately tricks the elderly.
Seventh, about 30% or more of students in MBUSD are not residents of Manhattan Beach! MB has had good schools in the past, and we have been very generous with our gifts, but why are only Manhattan Beach residents being charged? How will those non-residents who benefit from increased funding share this burden? They won’t.
Student enrollment has dropped by over 700 students and is going lower each year as good parents seek to avoid the ‘Wokeism’ at MBUSD. The District makes up for the lost numbers of resident students by admitting more non-resident students each year to maintain adequate State funding. Yet the residents will be the ones stuck with a 12-year bill for educating non-resident children. That’s dishonest and unfair to all Manhattan Beach residents.
Lastly, the voters of California stopped the abuse of over-taxation in 1978 by changing our State Constitution to require a 2/3 supermajority vote to increase taxes on our homes. A good reference is A Look at Voter-Approval Requirements for Local Taxes. This Constitutional law was designed precisely to prevent small, well-funded secretive groups from overtaking a city’s finances in order to channel public money, through obscure elections, to themselves.
It seems the corrupt have found a way to usurp our laws. “Yes on A” claims this is a citizen’s initiative instead of a teacher union/school district/city tax assessment, and therefore eligible for a judicially-made loophole allowing a lower standard of 50% + 1 vote to pass. But it doesn’t look like that. This is a regressive tax on property, on a per-parcel basis. It heavily benefits public institutions and unions.
And get this! If anyone fights the tax by showing it is a work-around of the 2/3 Constitutional requirement, the citizens of MB will have to foot all the legal bills to defend it in court. Taxpayers will pay all costs, not the MB Citizens for Schools committee who forced it upon us! (see Section 11)
Manhattan Beach Schools have been a great source of pride for every resident. That greatness was achieved and maintained for decades, with the very same State-restricted funding formulas we have now. It is clearly our parents’ active participation that has helped make MBUSD, decade after decade, a success.
Now with the specter of unlimited funding, a crony-packed oversight board with no meaningful management power, no budgeting, no planning, no need to listen to parents, and the consequent lack of parent participation, just how long will MBUSD maintain its success? I’ve observed, over my 67 years, that simply throwing more money at government entities is a full guarantee of mediocrity and the ultimate demise of excellence.
I’m voting NO on Measure A because I love Manhattan Beach Schools and Manhattan Beach. I’m sure there are well-meaning people supporting Measure A but they have not thought this through, nor do they understand what the measure means, or how it will be implemented. There is no way any reasonable voter can, simply by reading the plain language of Measure A.
We voters need to stop the knee-jerk “save the kids” reaction to every school funding proposal. This measure does nothing to save the kids, who aren’t actually in need of saving.
MBUSD has been for decades, one of the best school districts around. We should wait for a better, more well-thought-out proposal that matches the actual needs of our district equitably and effectively, that stops the payola and cronyism Measure A will surely create.
Confidentiality is requested (I have learned of the punitive doxing by the “Yes on A” folks, many of whom hail from the disbanded Bruce's Beach Task Force).
Sincerely,
~A 30+ year resident who reads with a legal mind applied to experience.
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