Residents question whopping final cost of proposed Marin County bond measure to refurbish schools
MARIN COUNTY -- Officials at the Tamalpais Union High School District are deciding whether to put a tax measure on the ballot to upgrade their high school campuses, but the amount of the bond issue has some in the community accusing them of swinging for the fences.
District representatives are set to weigh the measure at its meeting Tuesday evening.
Redwood High in Larkspur is an award-winning school but at more than 60 years old, it's buildings have seen better days.
"Our school, as you can see, it's a little run down, especially on the inside. It gets a little hot sometimes and the classrooms are super small," said Redwood High junior Ginger Howard. "And it's hard to get enough state funding to fix things like this because there are other priorities, and we understand that."
The Tam Union High School District is set to vote whether to put a bond measure on the ballot for March of 2024. The bond would raise money to upgrade the facilities at its three comprehensive high schools, including Redwood, Tampalpais and Archie Williams.
"The bottom line is we've got some leaky roofs that need to be tended [to]. We've got old outdated heating and plumbing and cooling systems and electrical systems," said the district's Assistant Superintendent for Business and Operations Corbett Elsen.
But it goes far beyond that. New athletic fields and solar canopies are planned for all three campuses, as well as new classrooms at Tamalpais and a new $104 million cafeteria and commons building for Redwood High. There is a hefty cost for all the planned renovation.
The ballot measure says it will raise $517 million in revenue, but if you add in the cost of the interest on the 30-year bonds, taxpayers will be paying a staggering $1.04 billion.
"We think that the size is too large. We think...we are concerned that they didn't prioritize," said Mimi Willard, president of the Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers.
The organization has taken up the fight to get the district to scale down the ballot measure. Willard pointed to the new cafeteria as an example of the district's overreach.
"It was deemed by the district's own metrics to be a 'Priority 2," she said. "So we would like to see the district focusing on the 'Priority 1' projects."
Willard said the voters also deserve ballot language that reflects the true cost of over a billion dollars rather than just the amount of the bonds. She suspects that the district may be aiming high for the March ballot because of a large number of funding measures that are expected in November. But Elsen denied that Tam Union is trying to get all that it can before tax fatigue sets in.
"I don't think we've swung for the fences," he said. "We've identified what we need...in terms of what our community feels that we need. We feel we owe it to our community. They've asked for this, so we need to reflect upon what the cost of this is."
The measure would tax property at a rate of $30 per $100,000 in assessed value. Elsen said that means the average homeowner in the district would pay $329 per year for the next 30 years.
It will take a 55 percent vote to approve the measure, and an early poll showed 60 percent were in favor. But a later poll shows that number has been coming down. Whether the largest bond measure in the district's history will pass now looks to be a toss-up.
