Four East Bay school districts seek voter permission in the March 5 election for what they say are extensions of existing parcel taxes.
The tax contains a cap of $15,998 per parcel, which has drawn opposition because it advantages the owners of properties larger than 27,347 square feet. That’s a building roughly half the size of a football field. It’s not just Albany school officials who are misleading voters. They are being enabled by County Counsel Donna Ziegler, who prepared the deceptive “impartial analysis” that fails to explain the core changes and tax increases, and City Council members and the League of Women Voters’ local president, who signed illusory ballot arguments that claim citizens somehow could repeal the measure at any time. They should know better.
In other words, typical Albany homeowners are going to pay roughly $2,500 annually for supplemental school taxes. For those whopping amounts, they deserve honesty and transparency from school officials. With Measure G, they didn’t get it.Berkeley has a maze of very costly supplemental taxes that are practically indecipherable to voters.
In addition, Berkeley property owners are paying off bonds from prior voter-approved school construction measures, and the district has yet to issue more than $300 million in bonds that voters approved in 2020, which will likely drive up property taxes in the future. Berkeley failed to provide us an accounting of the projected tax rates that accounted for the future bond issues, so we are using their projections from 2020.