Taxpayers are getting squeezed again!
A report has surfaced that the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education plans to increase property taxes in order to pay off bonded indebtedness, even though voters approved the bonds and an accompanying tax levy to pay for them.
It seems there is fine print in the voter approved bond issue that enables bond holders to demand a property tax increase to assure the bonds will be paid off if the previously approved tax increase is found to be inadequate to do so. Given the declining assessed values of property throughout the State, and particularly in Los Angeles, the voter approved tax levy now appears inadequate to pay off the bonds. At least so say the bond holders.
This may come as quite a shock to the property owners who think that Proposition 13 requires that all tax increases must be voter approved. Apparently the truth is something different.
Voters throughout California have approved special school bond issues over the years and in some cases bond issues for other purposes. It just may be that they are all ticking time bombs given the declining revenues from property taxes. Is a wave of property tax increases in the offing throughout much of California?
Art, I’m waiting for somebody to post what was on the OC Register today regarding Quach and Diep.
The increase in property tax to repay the Los Angeles bonds will only be applied to the people in Los Angeles, right? I don’t remember having an opportunity to vote down the bonds for Los Angeles. I live in Riverside county. My property tax should NOT increase, right?
Dean, the LA Unified School District bonds and property tax issue would not impact Riverside County property as Riverside County is outside the boundaries of LA unified. But that is not to say the same thing might not be brewing in your community with bonds approved by the local Riverside voters for schools, Community College District(s) and the like. One purpose of this post is to alert all that this could happen anywhere and readers might want to keep their antenna up to monitor any such past bond issues and the electeds in charge of assuring that bonded indebtedness is paid off.