School District Examines Parcel Tax Feasibility

The school board voted 3-1 to approve paying a contractor a maximum of $8,000 to build a database that will detail voter history, including the 2005 parcel tax vote. Trustee Maria Diaz-Slocum dissented, and Hilary Paulson was absent.

Database consultant Bill Ferguson of Milpitas will gather information from the district or from the Registrar of Voters to highlight fields like voter registration, voter propensity based on number of times voted, age, political party and ethnicity. The regular service rate is $100 per hour, with an educational discount of 25 percent. The estimated worktime for this project is 50 hours at a cost of $75 per hour, for a total of $3,750.

In light of crippling state budget cuts, the district wanted to gather more information to begin exploring the possibility of a bond or parcel tax, Superintendent Jan Christensen said. The district is the that feed into that does not have a parcel tax for supplemental funding. In contrast, students in the Woodside Elementary School District spends $17,320 per student during the 2009-2010 school year compared to $5,251 per student in the Redwood City School District.

Additionally, schools will lose $2.1 billion if Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax extensions fail, according to the district’s Chief Business Official Raul Parungao. The district has , one with 175 days versus one with 180 days, in case the tax extensions aren’t passed.

The supporting board members said this database will provide more detailed information to determine who exactly is voting in which areas of the city. The last parcel tax measure in 2009 failed by only 1,000 votes, just 4 percent shy of the two-thirds majority needed. 

“I don’t understand how we cannot do everything to explore another possible revenue source,” said Trustee Shelly Masur. “It’s clear to me this database will assess the feasibility of switching over to a parcel tax campaign.”

Board president Alisa MacAvoy said this information could help focus which groups totarget in a parcel tax campaign and where to start any outreach.

But Maria Diaz-Slocum, the dissenting trustee, said that her concern was the perception that the database will be used explicitly for the campaign.

But Christensen said hiring a contractor was completely legal because it was just exploring the feasibility of a bond or parcel tax. Parungao said he consulted the district’s legal counsel and the district could terminate the contract at any time, particularly if the board voted to put a measure on the ballot before the services were completed.

Though the information will belong to the district, it can be given to parcel tax campaigners and requested by the public through the Freedom of Information Act.