Police Tax Plan Defeated; Other City Measures Win

Voters in South Los Angeles Tuesday easily defeated a measure that would have increased property taxes in that part of the city to pay for 300 more police officers, while in citywide balloting six other issues won by wide margins.

Of the six other measures, Proposition 6--a $500-million bond issue to help rejuvenate the city’s antiquated sewer system--was considered by backers to be a crucial first step in a $2.3-billion public works program. Proposition 6 safely won the required majority approval, and will result in an initial 15-cent increase in the $5.50 monthly sewer charge, gradually doubling the current assessment to $11 by 1994.

Defeated Proposition 7, the controversial police-financing measure first proposed by Councilman Robert Farrell and then spurned by him, would have added $148 a year to the average property tax bill of residents in portions of six City Council districts. Requiring a two-thirds margin of approval, it lost overwhelmingly.

The police measure was first proposed by Farrell as a means of getting more police in four Police Department divisions--Newton, Southwest, Southeast and 77th Street. Its introduction, however, caused an uproar in Farrell’s 8th Council District, triggering a massive effort to defeat it by the South-Central Organizing Committee, which, its members say, represents 75,000 families.

Farrell later dropped his support of the measure after the City Council pushed through a plan to hire 250 more officers citywide, but as of Election Day the councilman still had been unable to shake off hard feelings among some community leaders who opposed the tax.

“We feel as though South-Central Los Angeles will be respected from this point on,” said Barbara Collins, co-chairperson of the No on 7 Campaign Committee, after the measure was defeated. “The people have almost unanimously gone against Proposition 7; they can see very clearly they were dealt a shabby deal and they are sending a strong message to the City Council, ‘Don’t send us this kind of garbage again.’ ”

Collins’ group, despite a lack of an apparent organized effort to support the ballot proposition, took no chances. She said Tuesday that over the last month, opponents phoned 6,000 families to urge defeat of the tax measure. The anti-Proposition 7 message also was pushed in community forums and included on campaign mailers sent out to voters by the candidates in the 10th and 6th Council districts, Collins said.

Other, less controversial, city measures that won and what they will do:

- Charter Amendment 1 strips from sponsors of citywide initiatives the power to prepare the titles and summaries of their ballot measures. Passage assigns that power to the city attorney’s office. Advocates said voter confusion over such initiatives, such as the “Jobs with Peace” measure in 1985, made the shift necessary.

- Charter Amendment 2 allows the City Council to reschedule municipal elections that might conflict with religious holidays or other events and consequently reduce potential voter turnout. Orthodox Jews had complained that the April 14 primary fell on Passover, forcing them to forgo voting because religious law bars them from writing on holy days.

- Charter Amendment 3, similar to Charter Amendment 2, allows the Los Angeles Unified School District Board to reschedule its elections.

- Charter Amendment 4 requires that citywide initiatives qualifying after a signature-gathering campaign be placed before voters in the next scheduled election rather than the next city election, thus reducing the time it takes to bring such measures to a vote.

- Charter Amendment 5 toughens the city’s 1985 voter-approved campaign reform law to grant the city clerk subpoena power. The amendment also gives the city clerk authority to hire investigators and to establish civil penalties in addition to the criminal penalties violators now face.