PUBLIC FORUM : PROPERTY OWNERS FLAY PROPOSED ASSESSMENTS.

As a property owner, I attended the May 29 public hearing to create a new assessment district for the Los Angeles Community College District.

To say the least, this was quite an educational meeting. There were a lot of emotions vented, caused by a governing body trying to extort money from people or entities owning property. Money, per se, was not the real issue.

The true irritations are as follows:

Circumventing Proposition 13.

Denying property owners the right to vote.

Masking the word ``assessment'' over the word ``taxes.''

Unfair taxation: taxing property owners instead of taxing everyone.

Financial irresponsibility.

Question: why would I want to trust the L.A. Community College Board?

- Fred Reiner

Granada Hills

I am in receipt of 10 letters regarding the Los Angeles City Council proposal to increase my tax bill for parks.

I find it hard to understand why this proposal was even thought of. The city has more parks than it can police and maintain.

The statement of purpose for the assessment mentions safety, usability, clean air and increased property values. However, I do not know of any park in the Canoga Park area where a family can enjoy a picnic without fear of gangs, drug dealers their customers and various other criminal types.

As to property values, I doubt property adjacent to Lanark Park is worth more than other property in Canoga Park.

It is my opinion that the City Council and its various departments will have to do like the average taxpayer: Be more efficient and do more with less.

- Keene W. Thomas Jr.

Canoga Park

Last month we received two notices of the formation of two assessment districts, one from the city of Los Angeles and the other from the Los Angeles Community College District. Both of these are obvious attempts to evade the provisions of Proposition 13.

It is necessary to inform new property owners what it was like before Proposition 13 went into effect. Our property taxes were raised every year. In 14 years the property taxes on our home had increased by eight times (from about $100 in 1955 to about $800 in 1978) and the report was that they would double again the following year. Retired people on fixed incomes were literally being taxed out of their homes.

So if you hear Proposition 13 being attacked, defend it. Think of what it could be like if it were abolished or if the politicians and bureaucrats find a means to evade it.

- C. McClure

Woodland Hills

The ``protest'' procedure is blatantly unfair. Those opposed must write letters while those in favor need do nothing. This is a clear violation of the most rudimentary democratic principles. This is a tax, regardless of claims that it is not, else why do such assessments appear on property tax bills?

As a taxpayer, I should have the right to vote in a fair and unbiased election on this tax. The Community College District clearly benefits many people who are not property owners subject to the proposed ``assessment,'' actually a tax. The tax should be paid for by all taxpayers in the district, if approved by vote, not just by property owners.

Benefits Assessments are not recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as tax-deductible property taxes, thus further penalizing property owners victimized by this method of skirting the intent of Proposition 13, which was overwhelmingly approved by a majority of all California voters, not just by property owners.

- James C. Senn

Westlake Village

I am protesting the city's intention to form a landscape and lighting assessment district pursuant to the provisions of the landscape and lighting act of 1972.

When this act was written, there was not an illegal immigration explosion. I don't think property owners should have to pay more property tax to support the recreational and educational needs of people who are not entitled to them.

- Harold Netkin

Van Nuys

Opposition to the proposed assessments by the trustees of Los Angeles Community College District and the City Council must exceed 50 percent if they are to be abandoned. How can we be assured by these unscrupulous people that they have received 50 percent or more protests in writing?

- J.A. McMillin

West Hills

Property owners should wake up and protest the sneaky way the Community College District is planning to increase their property tax bills without putting their project before the voters in an honest, straightforward fashion.

After sending an undated notification of their plan, the district allowed only about three weeks time for protests. This period includes a major holiday, many graduations, weddings, etc., and provides very little time for taxpayers, who were unaware of their scheme, to file formal protests.

Would this scheme even have been considered if 50 percent of the property owners had to file formal approval instead of protests? To blind side the public and achieve their purpose by default certainly is not a very democratic method.

Could there possibly be a more crafty or devious way to circumvent the Proposition 13 requirement for a vote of the people to pass any new increases on property owners' tax bills?

- Helen Boyce

North Hollywood

We are responding to the $12 that the Los Angeles Community College assessment district would bogusly add to our property taxes.

Not only does this bear the earmarks of being illegal but, the Community College District should be held accountable for all the monies spent on two mailings with a possible third mailing pending.

A class action suit by all property owners would definitely get our signatures. The last thing we would vote for requiring $12 added to our property taxes would be ``lighting and landscaping for the community colleges.''

Our schools are falling apart, our public parks are not safe for use by families, graffiti is rampant, criminals are not being punished, illegals are out of control and welfare is a farce.

Guess where lighting and landscaping fall on our priority scale? In truth is does not even appear.

- Floyd E. and Janice R. Buchan

Sun Valley

Call it what you want, an assessment district, a tax, a bond; go about it any way you want, straightforward, or sneaky. Bottom line, it all means the same thing, the property owners are getting screwed again.

I say enough is enough. There is no need to wonder why so many people and businesses are leaving California.

- Terri White

Sunland

It is unconscionable that the district has put the onus on 50 percent of the recipients of a form letter to send properly formatted protests in order to voice their opposition.

The college district has made this decision unilaterally unbeknown to many property owners.

It is unfortunate that due to limited funding, the district has not had enough money to properly maintain and improve its facilities, but it is unfair for property owners to bear this burden alone.

Why not impose a tax on renters, or on all those owning a pet, or on all those over the age of 35? It is blatantly unfair to expect property owners to pay for community colleges. If property owners should pay, then non-property owners should pay as well.

Why not put it before the voters and do the democratic thing?

- Michele Kilroy

Northridge

`Gotcha' journalism

Mike Royko (``Questions remain after admiral's death,'' Opinions, May 2-cents) is right again as usual. His article discusses ``gotcha'' journalism and oily squirming by Newsweek in the tragic suicide death of Admiral Jeremy Boorda.

The attitude of those ``gotcha'' journalists seems to be that Americans really yearn to know about trivial foibles and flaws in people. So the journalists trumpet forward with a slogan they created, the self-serving ``public's right to know.''

Those crusading journalists they don't seem to have a quality known as decency. And class, applied to them, means a very low subdivision of phylum.

- Charles A. Bullock 

Glendale

Burbank Airport stricken with terminal frustration

As a Burbank resident, I am tired of the sophomoric debate over building a new terminal at Burbank Airport.

Burbank's members of the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority need to get a grip. Glendale and Pasadena representatives aren't going to relinquish any of their rights on the Airport Authority board just because the airport is in Burbank.

Yes, Burbank is impacted by noise from airport operations. But the East Valley bears even more, and I don't see Burbank's crybaby representatives on the airport authority agitating to give the city of Los Angeles seats on the board. Get used to it Burbank. The control of Burbank Airport isn't going to change, and holding the regional economy hostage by delaying construction of a new terminal just wastes time makes us look like buffoons.

Burbank residents need to realize that their airport hardly is a nuisance, like a neighbor who play his stereo too loud. It is one of the driving forces behind our strong local economy. Burbank's office vacancy rate is just about nil, because between the studios and the airport, this is a great town in which to do business.

If Burbank bears a disproportionate share of the costs of having a major airport located here, it also reaps a disproportionate share of the benefits. The new, larger terminal will provide our local economy with still more growth. It will not triple the number of flights at the airport, as Burbank's clownish Airport Authority members and moronic City Council majority claim.

The Daily News has reported that the number of gates will increase from 12 to 19. Floor space will triple, but not departure gates.

Having said all that, there are things the airport authority could do to lessen the impact of noise. Santa Monica Airport provides a useful example. Santa Monica is a general aviation airport, but it does accept jets that can be every bit as noisy as a Boeing 737. And like Burbank Airport, Santa Monica's is located at the very corner of one city, while the flight pattern impacts residents of another.

Santa Monica Airport has a mandatory curfew between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. Violations are prosecuted as a misdemeanor.

I don't see why the Airport Authority, acting in good faith, cannot adopt similar procedures to control noise, rather than succumbing to know-nothing NIMBYism of the most juvenile kind.

- Keith McCoslin

Burbank

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Jeremy Boorda