Posted on 06/23/2006 8:27:23 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
California voters will be asked whether they want to raise property taxes by $50 per parcel under an initiative that qualified Friday for the November ballot.
The measure would generate about $500 million a year by taxing commercial and residential property. Elderly and disabled people would be exempt. The money could be used only for specific purposes, such as reducing class sizes, buying textbooks and improving school safety.
The measure is being funded by two Silicon Valley executives. Reed Hastings, the Netflix founder who was once a member of the state board of education, has given nearly $7 million to the committee sponsoring the measure. John Doerr, the venture capitalist, gave $2 million.
The initiative joins 11 other proposals that previously made the ballot, although a $9.95 billion high-speed rail bond is expected to be moved to November 2008.
The ballot also features measures to tax oil programs to fund research into alternative energy, increase penalties for sex offenders and monitor them more closely, require parents to be notified before their child has an abortion and raise the cigarette tax to fund health care.
The ballot also features bond measures to pay for transportation improvements, flood control programs, affordable housing, school construction, and water quality programs and new parks.
The deadline for initiatives to qualify for the November ballot is June 29.
The tide is finally turning on these taxes. We turned most of them down in this past election; let's keep up the good work folks.
You know if they made property requirments a voter qualification again, property rights would be safe again. Things would also be generally more conservative.
It is funny how property qualifications suddenly make voters more responsible and generally more conservative....hmmm... wonder why that is. When people actually own property they suddenly realize the unjust nature of mobocracy.
Yeah, right. Until than it will be kept in a lock box. No more money for the black hole known as education and the unions that suck it dry.
Just another NO vote.
Money is fungible. If you get $50 from a parcel and use it for the "designated" purpose, you can remove $50 of funding from another source that was previously used to cover that "designated" purpose. The level of funding for the "designated" purpose doesn't improve one bit, but the $50 snitched from the prior funding source gets used for what the politicians really intended when the tax increase was imposed. It's classic money laundering.
I'm in CA. I never vote money bonds/propositions for education. I never vote for anything that's a tax or any kind. CA has mismanaged too much too long.
Use your money for: Smaller class sizes which have not been shown to have an effect on improving the performance of students by very much statewide? Textbooks that preach socialist, immoral, and liberal agenda indoctrination? And school improving school safety a concept so vague that it could be literally construed as out of proportion as the Commerce Clause?
Instead of perpetuating this broken system, they might want to think about going back to some of the older methods of education in US history that seemed to have worked more effectively. Smaller class size is not the only way to remedy the problem.
And THIS time, they really mean it....it actually WILL go to these specific things and they WON'T divert it to administration, junkets and other goodies.
You believe them, don't you?
Good grief. This is definitely a HELL NO. Education in CA is a black hole. Break the unions first.
Kerry and Gore wouldn't have gotten so very close to winning and I suspect the CA state legislature's makeup would change course from the tinfoil moonbat Marxist progressive ideology.
When some sleazebag politician wants to get their fingers in your wallet, it's always "about the children".
No taxes are needed for the schools rather the education system in California needs to be closely audited. IMO, the graft and corruption within the system would boggle the mind not to mention the total waste of tax dollars. As a matter of fact, I would bet that holds true for every state in the country. The sad and pathetic fact remains that a better education was provided in the 19th century in one-room school houses. $$ doesn't equate to a quality education. Today's public schools are a perfect example of that.
I am a big fan of smaller class sizes. We are putting my daughters in private school because we feel that they (especially one of them) will do much better in a small class.
However, I won't give vote yes on any measure that gives more money to my school district (San Jose Unified). They are horrible, and they mismanage money.
I'm a big fan of charter schools and vouchers.
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