Taxes: Proposal Supporting Schools Linked to Property Values, Reader Believes

My wife and I own a two-bedroom house in Santa Monica’s Sunset Park. We pay $4,000 a year in property tax. When we recently refinanced, we found our property had lost $40,000 in value.

The parcel tax proposal put on the ballot by the school board is one tiny part of our tax payments, but it will help keep Santa Monica-Malibu public schools solvent if it passes, so I support it strongly. Our home is our largest investment. And anything that hurts our schools will further hurt our property value.

I am a 60-year-old, church-going, U.S.-born Army veteran who has grown children. I am not a renter. I don’t belong to Santa Monica Renters Rights, a group which a May 15 letter writer contends controls the local school board.

That letter writer doesn’t like the sex-education program in the schools and he doesn’t like SMRR, and that’s fine by me. But that is hardly a reason to cripple school financing by voting out a critical revenue source for the schools. Vote to change the school board if you wish, but support the Santa Monica-Malibu schools’ parcel tax. Don’t make homeowners’ property values a victim of political battles.

CHARLES P. DONALDSON

Santa Monica