Contra Costa Taxpayers Association

It is the practice of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association (CoCoTAX) not to take a position on a school bond or parcel tax if they are fairly and clearly presented to the voters. We believe the voters are capable of deciding for themselves. However, the Mount Diablo Unified School District’s Measure C is so egregious, CoCoTax is compelled to oppose this measure for the following reasons:

- The school board first considered a parcel tax that would pay for the kinds of things they need, teacher salaries, maintenance, etc. When told it would not pass with the required 2/3 vote the Board decided to go for a $348 million in bonds that cannot be used to pay for what the Board thought they needed (bonds are used for buildings, etc.)
- However, in order to be able to tell voters (and kudos to Dan Borenstein for uncovering all of this) that their tax rate would not increase, the Board decided to issue the bonds but delay paying for most of them until 2031 when a previous bond issue is paid off. That costly decision could mean that the $348 million in bonds would cost taxpayers as much as $1.87 BILLION.
- In addition, many of the items listed are really maintenance issues which means the Board has been neglecting that important aspect of school operations.

Sadly, Dan Borenstein revealed in his May 2 Contra Costa Times column that when the School Superintendent was asked about total cost of the bonds, he had no idea because the District had not even bothered to calculate it. That is unforgivable.

When I recently spoke with one of the members of the committee that supported this bond and he proudly bragged that they would be able to put solar panels on the schools, save energy, and then instead of paying back these expensive bonds, would put the money into the General Fund. (Comment: this is clearly their way of doing an end run around a parcel tax). I pointed out to him that this is like putting today’s lunch on a credit card and paying for it (plus interest) over 40 years. He had no clue that this is what they were doing.

The mantra of CoCoTax in our critical education role has been that “Bonds aren’t free!” but not even we would have anticipated how uninformed and unapologetic the Mt. Diablo school board would be for Measure C.

The taxpayers and voters of the District should not make the same mistake the school board did – reject Measure C.