Editorial: Voters should reject San Jose Unified’s latest tax measure

Just six months after voters approved the San Jose Unified School District’s pricey property tax increase for school construction, officials are seeking renewal of a second levy for district operations.

District trustees have called a costly special election for May 6 and are warning that critical funding will expire if voters don’t approve Measure A. The last-minute rush is yet another sign of the district’s dysfunction, which was the subject of a scathing grand jury report last year.

Voters should step back from the pressure tactics and examine the facts. If they do, they will see why we recommend voting no on the measure to extend a $72 annual parcel tax for another eight years.

For starters, the district does not, or should not, need the money. Over the past five fiscal years, from 2019-20 to 2023-24, student enrollment declined 13%, according to the district’s data.

Yet, no schools were closed during that time. The number of district employees actually went up slightly, by 0.4%. And expenditures increased from $366 million to $492 million, up 34% over five years.

Measure A would extend the $72 annual parcel tax that voters approved with Measure Y in 2016. The tax on properties in the district provides $5 million annually. So, we’re talking about slightly over 1% of the district’s expenditures. This is not a budget buster.

Indeed, given the decline in enrollment, district officials should be looking at ways to trim costs rather than continuing the rapid escalation of expenditures.

Then there is the dodgy political timing of Measure A. District officials certainly knew since 2016, when voters passed Measure Y, that it would expire on June 30 of this year. They have had plenty of time to prepare and seek voter approval of an extension.

But district officials made a deliberate decision to wait until the last minute before calling an off-year election that is almost certain to have low voter turnout. They first wanted to push through the more costly $1.15 billion school construction bond program that they placed on the November 2024 ballot.

Paying off those bonds will require 30 years of tax increases and cost property owners at the start $59 per $100,000 of assessed value annually. Combined with two prior voter-approved bond measures, the total yearly tax bill for school bonds would peak in 2029 at $120 per $100,000 of assessed value.

For a house with a district average assessed value of $723,870, that would total $869 annually. For homes recently purchased at a county average of about $2 million, the tax bill for the bonds is about $2,400 a year.

As we noted in our editorial last fall, the school board placed this exceptionally large bond measure on the ballot in a meeting held on 24 hours’ notice. Despite the big price tag, the measure lacked a spending prioritization plan.

The last thing district officials wanted then was to remind voters that they also paid another special school tax. They didn’t want voters to examine the total costs of the bond program and the parcel tax at one time, which would have been far more responsible.

So, despite having years to prepare for the parcel tax renewal election, they made the costly decision to postpone it until May 6. Because the election has just one item on it, the district must bear all the expenses for conducting the election, which will be about $2 million-$3 million. In other words, about half of the first year’s revenues from the extension would go toward offsetting the cost of the election.

That should tell you something about school trustees’ fiscal irresponsibility. Had they placed the parcel tax extension on the November ballot, the extra cost to the district would have been a quarter as much, or less, because expenses for balloting and vote counting would have been split with other government agencies holding elections.

None of this should be surprising considering the grand jury report chastising the district’s management policies and poor board meeting accessibility. This is a district plagued by a lack of transparency.

Voters should reject district officials’ politically manipulative behavior and, especially, this last-minute attempt to squeeze taxpayers for money the district shouldn’t need. Voters should reject Measure A.