School Board to Finalize November Parcel Tax Measure

In May 2011, with the mired in budget woes, members of the the range of variables they’d have to nail down in advance of placing a new parcel tax measure on the ballot in November.

Nearly a year later, that effort is kicking into high gear, as district officials plan to have a well-oiled campaign ready when school starts on Sept. 10, less than two months before the Nov. 6 election. The school board meets Tuesday morning in a special session to pass a resolution that lays out the language for the parcel tax ballot measure, including the amount the campaign will seek – somewhere between $180 and $220 annually on top of the current $731 per parcel.

The process is a bit accelerated from past parcel tax efforts – the tax was first passed in 2004 and raised and extended via Measure A in November 2008 – because of the one week delay in the start of the 2012-2013 school year due to the at , , and schools.

Over the past six months, the district has been ticking off wins in its “shared solutions/sacrifices” strategy, hoping to garner buy-in from a number of school community groups in an effort to take a united front to voters in the fall.

“We’ve made progress on pulling all these levers,” board member Steve Sell, who has been one of the leaders of past parcel tax campaigns, said at the board’s retreat several weeks ago. “The awareness within the school community is really elevated.”

That progress includes a tentative agreement between the district and the Mill Valley Teachers Association, a deal that was announced last month with no details but should be signed off on by both groups in the next two weeks, according to district Superintendent Paul Johnson.

It is also bolstered by yet another increased commitment from , the local private educational foundation that has been supporting arts education in Mill Valley for three decades. In recent years, Kiddo has expanded its purview to . In addition to those programs, Kiddo has agreed for one year to raise as much as $450,000 for physical education classes as part of its overall $2.7 million funding goal this year.

In addition, the Mill Valley Council of PTAs has committed to raising $60 per student for materials and supplies, saving the district approximately $187,000. The fledgling  group hosted a series of parent forums earlier this year to spread the word about the district’s budget woes.

“It’s all a bit fluid now, but we’re starting to nail down these individual pieces,” Johnson said.

Such a united front is vital, district officials said, because parcel tax measures must garner two-thirds support in order to pass and a parcel tax expansion faces a bit of a headwind for a variety of reasons. For one, a tax measure in a slow-to-recover economy is a tough sell, particularly since 82 percent of district voters don’t have a student in one of the district’s six schools.

The biggest question the board must answer Tuesday is how much additional parcel tax to seek. For every $100 in parcel tax, the district garners approximately $1 million in revenue. The district has plotted a range of $180 to $220 that will address its needs. Now it must determine how much voters can accept.

“It’s pretty hard to see the low end range getting us what we need,” said Roger Peters, a member of the district’s Community Financial Advisory Committee (CFAC), which has conducted a number of models on that range. “We’ve definitely got to get that something that will pass and we definitely need as much money as we can.”

In a survey of 400 district voters in March, district consultant EMC Research asked half about $180 and the other half about $220. Neither garnered two-thirds support.

But the surveys showed that voters hold the district in high regard, view the threat of the funding loss due to state budget cuts as real and fear a drop in educational quality, pollster Alex Evans told the board in March.

“The only guarantee for Mill Valley is local control,” Johnson said.

The 411: The Mill Valley School District Board of Trustees meets at 9 a.m. Tuesday at the district's offices, 411 Sycamore Avenue.