MOORPARK COUNCIL, SCHOOL DISTRICT PUT TAX, BOND MEASURES ON BALLOT.

Byline: Gloria Gonzales Daily News Staff Writer

Come November, city voters will weigh in on two ballot measures that if passed would raise property taxes on a $200,000, single-family home by $86 a year.

Both the City Council and the Moorpark Unified School District voted unanimously Wednesday to put measures on the November ballot asking property owners for money for schools and parks.

The council will ask voters for a special parcel tax to replace money collected from a parks assessment district soon to be made defunct by Proposition 218. Park maintenance has been funded with a tax on homeowners at a cost of $40.16 per year per household.

Before Proposition 218, cities could create assessment districts to pay for ambulance, fire, park and library services. Proposition 218 takes away that power, and requires that even existing assessment district taxes be approved by voters.

The new tax would cost a single-family homeowner $68.50 per year, $28.34 more than the previous parks tax.

``We're being proactive in thinking about how we're going to pay for the parks, and that's the beauty of Proposition 218,'' Councilman Chris Evans said. ``Now the voters can tell us if they want to pay to maintain the parks. If they don't want to pay, it's our job to respond to their will.''

The special tax would pay only to maintain the city's parks and senior and community center, and would last for 10 years. The tax varies depending on how the property owner uses the land, and ranges from $68.50 for a single-family home to $1,197 for a light manufacturing plant.

On the same ballot, taxpayers will be asked to approve a school board request for $16.18 million in long-term bonds to pay for new libraries, science labs, technology centers and classrooms.

The board voted unanimously Wednesday evening to put the bond measure on the ballot after polling residents about how much they would be willing to pay to support schools.

Superintendent Tom Duffy had originally hoped for a $26 million bond, but feared voters would not back a measure that would have cost property owners about $75 per household per year. The $16.18 ballot measure will cost owners an additional $29 per $100,000 of assessed property value.

The board came up with the $29 figure after a San Luis Obispo market research firm polled 400 residents, asking them questions on how much they would be willing to pay and what improvements they deemed most worthy. The poll cost the district between $10,000 and $15,000, said board member Tom Baldwin, who suggested the survey.

``My concern was that we should have a sense of what voters would support before we started down this road,'' Baldwin said Thursday. ``It's not so much the cost of getting it on the ballot, which will be between $3,000 and $4,000, but the energy it takes to get people all fired up about it, and what happens to morale if it fails. If that happens, it's much harder to go back to the voters a second time.''

Board members, who voted before the City Council passed its parks tax plan, expressed concern about the two requests for additional tax money on the same ballot. Both bodies had to vote Wednesday night to meet a July 3 deadline for November ballot measures.

``That was our main concern in terms of whether we should wait to put this before the voters,'' Baldwin said. ``We're a little worried, but the amount we're asking for is much smaller, and as a school district we lead the ballot.''

That means the first choice Moorpark voters have on the ballot will be whether they want to pay the extra property tax to support schools.

Board members also hope similar bond measures on ballots in neighboring districts will lead to a groundswell of support for schools.

``School districts have had a lot of success with bond measures lately,'' Baldwin said. ``The Las Virgenes and Conejo Valley districts both have measures on the November ballot. People will hear what's happening in other communities and want their schools to keep up.''

The Conejo Valley Unified School District will ask voters for $97 million, while the Las Virgenes School District will seek $93 million.

Duffy has also said Moorpark has recovered from the recession of the early '90s and has become more affluent. He has also noted that even in hard times, the majority of Moorpark residents have supported schools.

In 1990, in the midst of the Southern California recession, 56 Moorpark voters said yes to a $25 million bond measure, but school bond measures require 66 percent, or two-thirds of the total number of votes.

Each of the district's nine schools would receive some of the bond money, which would be distributed over a period of years. Schools would get new safety matting, play areas, additional classrooms, and science and computer labs.

The bond would also pay for new science, gymnasium and music buildings at Moorpark High School and a science lab at Community High School. Peach Hill and Flory elementary schools and Chaparral Middle School would all get new Library Technology Learning Centers, and the district would use some money to create a fiber-optic network connecting school computers.

The park tax would pay to maintain the city's 14 parks, the senior and community center and Arroyo Vista Community Park for the next 10 years, at an estimated cost of $1.5 million per year, said Deputy City Manager Richard Hare. The park tax would also require a two-thirds majority to pass.

``I believe people in Moorpark care about their parks,'' Evans said, ``and they should remember that it's only $28 more a year than what they're paying now. I believe people want to maintain parks at the same level, but if enough people vote against it, then that's their will, and we have to abide by that.''