Fifth time’s the charm

In a month-long, mail-in vote that ended Tuesday, residents living within the La Cañada Unified School District boundaries made history by approving a five-year, $150 parcel tax that will generate an estimated $900,000 annually for the public school system.

This is the first time in five attempts that the LCUSD and local education advocates have succeeded in pushing through a parcel tax in the district. Similar special elections held in 1985, twice in 1999 and most recently in 2004 all failed to garner voter approval.

The latest tally showed that 4,732 voters, or 74.6%, voted ‘yes’ on the special June ballot measure while 1,606 voters, or 25.4%, voted ‘no.’ The parcel tax needed a two-thirds majority to pass.

An estimated 250 votes remain to be counted and final numbers will not be released until Friday afternoon. The outstanding votes, however, are not enough to change the outcome of the election.

Members of the parcel tax committee, the school board and the La Cañada Flintridge Educational Foundation(LCFEF) celebrated the passage of the parcel tax on Tuesday night at the Urban Army Pilates and Fitness Studio in La Cañada.

Barry Reed chaired the 35-member parcel tax committee that oversaw the campaign. The committee spent all of May placing thousands of phone calls to local property owners to educate them about the measure and to identify supporters, Reed said. They then made follow up calls throughout June to remind voters to submit their mail-in ballots by the June 30 deadline.

“Our primary mission was to inform and educate the community," Reed said. “During the month of May we attempted to call every homeowner in [the La Cañada school district] three times.”

Reed said he and the other members of his team knew that is was going to be a close election. Anger is running high about state government finances, he noted, and the committee was careful to distinguish the parcel tax from the unsuccessful May 19 state-wide ballot measures.

Speaking on Monday before the results were made public, David Wilcox, president of the Foothill Republican Assembly, said he strongly opposed the tax because he felt it would do nothing to fix the ongoing, long-term problem of educational funding.