As Rebel Girl noted, this morning, Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur spammed the district community, alerting us to two recent newspaper articles about declining property tax collections (County's property tax values tumble $5.2billion [OC Reg] and First property tax dip since 1994 [LA Times]).Sounds alarming.
"I encourage you,” he wrote, “to read [these] two very important newspaper articles … regarding the decreasing property taxes in Orange County. This will have an adverse impact on our District budget, especially in the area of basic aid dollars.”
Naturally, the Chancellor’s links to the articles didn’t work. The link to the Reg article opened up my mail program. The link to the Times article opened to a page that did not include the article.
Whatever. I, too, noticed these articles. Our district is an unusual “basic aid” district, which means that we get lots of our funding from a portion of locally collected property taxes. So when property values decline, our funding declines. On the other hand, compared to other districts, we’re swimming in dough, a fact that has inspired resentment across the state. We’ve got shitloads of extra money, and so the issue has been: how do we spend it? New facilities? A bust of St. Ronald?
As you know, here in Dissent, we’ve often noted our dependence on local property taxes, and we’ve monitored board discussions of the situation. We've been on top of it, baby.
So why didn’t I provide a link to yesterday’s articles?
It was because of lines like this one: “Orange County's total property tax values for 2009-10 are down 1.23%....” (LA Times).
One percent. Wow.
You know me: I have no clue about fiscal issues. But I do have a question: do we get a portion of the whole county’s property tax collections (which took a 1% hit) or do we get a portion of the property tax collections specifically for the cities that we serve (i.e., South County cities)?I ask because some cities—e.g., Laguna Beach and Irvine—actually experienced an increase: they “have slightly increased their assessed values, mainly because of development,” reported the Times.
So exactly where do we stand?
Raghu likes to play the big man. We should just buy him a crown and then ask him to hide somewhere, incommunicado.
That would be best for all concerned, I think.
Raghu likes to play the big man. We should just buy him a crown and then ask him to hide somewhere, incommunicado.
That would be best for all concerned, I think.
5 comments:
Raghu pretends to know about fiscal issues but at meetings it's clear he knows little, relying on his Deputy to make things work.
RM is always, at BOT meetings, eager to show he is abreast of the news even if he can't grasp the bird because the feathers cover what's to be seen of the breast. This confusing metaphor suggests how this man's mind works when he encounters $ in a budget. Look at the bungling at ATEP.
I don't think "resentment" is quite the right word to describe how folks who work in struggling CC districts feel when we look at basic aid districts like yours.
Of course, teachers and classified staff who work at SOCCCD didn't create the inequity; you're not personally responsible.
It's the whole capitalist economic system that's fucked up, and our statewide community college system is just a microcosm of something much larger, a relatively minor example in a much bigger mess.
--100 miles down the road (where we're broke)
as Dorothy Day famously said:
"Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system."
100 Miles: if "resentment" isn't the right word, what is? I think I understand you, and I don't disagree, but I would like some clarification. Is your thought that rich districts (re property values) have an opportunity to get on this special gravy train, resulting in yet another "rich get richer" scenario?
It is not clear exactly where we stand because Raghu never explains anything to any useful level of detail. Mr. Blather bloviates useless information and never quite gets to the point. But, I digress.
Currently, community colleges are experiencing a huge influx of students for a variety of reasons including: students that can no longer afford the UC or CS systems or are simply not being accepted due to their cutbacks, returning vetrans, and people returning due to layoffs for re-training.
Given that SOCCCD is not struggling fiscally as much as other districts it would seem logical that they would grow the college to meet the "communities" needs. After all, isn't serving the community the general mission of a community college?
This CA budget apparently was balanced on the backs of the poor... it seems as though SOCCCD is using this as a justification to do more of the same.
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