Sausalito Marin City School District sends tax pitch to ballot

Voters in the Sausalito Marin City School District will be asked to approve its first parcel tax on the Nov. 5 ballot.

District trustees voted 5-0 at a special meeting on Thursday in favor of the ballot placement. The measure will need two-thirds voter approval to pass, said Lisa Bennett, board president.

“This still has to be voted on by the voters,” Bennett said at the meeting. “There has to be a lot of community outreach that has to happen.”

The measure would assess a tax of 15 cents per square foot annually for each residential or commercial building for eight years. The assessment would be capped at buildings of 23,000 square feet.

For example, owners of a 2,000-square-foot home would pay a tax of $300 annually. Owners of unimproved parcels would pay a flat tax of $25.

The per-square-foot tax is different than in most Marin school districts, which rely on the assessed value of the building. The Sausalito Marin City School District is the only Marin school district that does not have a parcel tax.

Bennett said in June that the per-square-foot tax is seen as more equitable for Sausalito and Marin City, based on advice from the district’s tax consultant, Larry Tramutola of Oakland.

The tax is expected to raise about $1.3 million annually to help recruit and retain teachers and run educational programs. The money can only be spent locally and is not subject to any takeover by the state.

Exemptions would be offered for low-income seniors, people with disabilities, buildings owned by government and other public entities, public housing owners and the district’s nearly 400 houseboat residents.

“We want to make sure the tax is not a burden on people with fixed incomes,” Bennett said. Even if exempt from paying the tax, those residents would still be allowed to vote, she said.

Trustee Bonnie Hough said she was interested in adding something to the ballot that specified the need to add a second language program, such as Spanish.

“I think that would be something to help prepare students for college,” Hough said.

Superintendent LaResha Huffman said the district is not able to list specific items that the tax money would cover in the official tax resolution language.

However, she said, “we will continue to have discussions on that topic” as the campaigning to pass the measure is launched in the upcoming weeks.

Terrie Green, a Marin City environmental justice leader and longtime education advocate, said she didn’t want to hear a lot of promises from the district on specific items, only to see those promises go undelivered.

“Are you all going to be true to your word?” Green asked the trustees during the public comment period. She said district parents have been disappointed in the past.

“The state’s desegregation order promised parents that there would be things that happened to make kids academically proficient,” Green said, referring to the 2019 order by the state Attorney General’s Office. “That didn’t happen.”

In addition, Green pointed to a promise to pay for a new athletic field at the Marin City campus under the $41.6 million Measure P bond approved by voters in 2020.

“That didn’t happen either,” said Green, who has a grandchild in the district.

The district, which is building a new elementary school on the Sausalito campus, has run out of bond money for the $5.8 million athletic field. The district is applying for various state grants to help finish the field, which has already been approved by the Division of the State Architect.

“I want to know what you all plan to do with those dollars,” Green said of the parcel tax proceeds. “I would want to know that, and I would want to hold you all accountable to do that.”

Huffman said the specific items, such as Spanish classes or other programs, would be covered under the broad parameters of the parcel tax resolution passed by trustees on Thursday.

The resolution says that “parcel tax funding will stay in the community to give students the essentials to achieve in high school and college.”

That will include plans “to maintain manageable class sizes; to provide additional programs in reading, science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics — or STEAM; to improve instructional materials; and to provide academic intervention for children who need additional support.”

The parcel tax would require several accountability steps, the resolution states.

Those include “formation of an independent citizens’ oversight committee, annual audits and mandatory public disclosure to provide transparency and ensure funds are spent as promised.”

Bennett said that although the trustees’ unanimous passage of the ballot resolution Thursday was the “last chance” for the board to vote on the tax election, it won’t be the last time the matter is discussed with parents and the school community.

“There’s going to be a lot of community input gathered to help this pass,” she said.