School officials accept parcel tax defeat: Tax extension seems primed to fail narrowly, inviting tough budget talks

San Mateo-Foster City Elementary School District officials are waving the white flag on their effort to pass a parcel tax extension which appears to have failed by an extremely narrow margin.

Measure Y, floated to extend the district’s existing $209 parcel tax for nine years, received 65.2 percent support from voters according to the most recent election returns — about 1.5 percent short of the supermajority required to pass.

District officials expressed their dismay over the apparent outcome of the all-mail election in which ballots were due Tuesday, March 28, and indicated potentially tough budget decisions are coming on the horizon.

“It was very close. We of course appreciate our community support. The community supported us for Measure X and we cannot be thankful enough for that,” said district spokeswoman Amber Farinha, referring to the bond measure previously passed by voters. “We are thankful that everyone was able to participate. But we are disappointed. Now we need to make some difficult decisions, unfortunately. And I don’t know what those are yet.”

Remee Vargas, president of the district’s PTA council who rallied support for the tax, expressed a similar sentiment.

“The PTA is disappointed in the outcome of the election,” she said in an email. “We won’t know the impact until the district shares its budget plans. The PTA will continue to work together with the district and its schools to provide the best possible educational experiences for all our students.”

County election officials have not authorized the final tallies, but semi-official results published last week held steady at the 65.2 percent mark.

School officials are slated to meet Thursday, April 13, to begin discussing next steps in addressing the anticipated budget shortfall created through the failure of the tax generating roughly $7 million annually. The district also has a perpetual $104 parcel tax passed in 1991 to help finance additional programs.

Farinha said she does not anticipate any decisions will be made during the upcoming meeting, and said many of the potential budget reductions will be identified over the coming weeks and months.

“We are just opening up the forum to start discussing it,” she said.

Looking ahead, school board President Chelsea Bonini said she would favor going back to voters later with a revised proposal for another parcel tax generating revenue for services considered essential by some district officials.

“I think that it is very important to try to pass it again,” she said. “It is one of the main sources of additional funds and we don’t have adequate funds from the state. We should, in my opinion, at least be discussing when that seems appropriate.”

Bonini though noted officials have been wary of the threat of the tax failing, and trimmed the budget by roughly $2.5 million earlier this year to ease the potential pain of some of the coming cuts.

“We have already tightened up a little and I’m hoping that we could do the rest a little at a time,” she said.

Farinha noted the poor timing of the failure for district officials, as they are engaged in contract negotiations with teachers who stood to benefit from the revenue generated by the tax, had it passed.

“I feel bad for our teachers,” she said. “It’s unfortunate really, but we are going to have to look at what this means.”

Teachers flooded a recent board meeting to call for more money, claiming many are struggling to afford the cost of living locally on their current salaries.

Farinha said regardless of the election outcome, she believed the district would have struggled to keep pace with wages offered in the private sector which are driving the expensive housing market.

“The reality is that it is so expensive to live in our area, the parcel tax wouldn’t have made that up,” she said.

As officials prepare for next steps under a budget already constrained by reduced allocations from the state government, Bonini said she expects some hard choices will be up for consideration soon.

“I’m disappointed of course and I’m definitely not looking forward to having to address additional modifications or cuts to our budget,” she said.

But she remained optimistic that the district may be able to pass a similar measure sometime down the road.

“I’m hopeful we can pass this parcel tax in a future election and I think that we definitely need to just deal with this as it is right now,” she said.

The San Mateo-Foster City Elementary School District Board of Trustees will meet 6 p.m. Thursday, April 13, in a special budget session at the district office, 1170 Chess Drive, Foster City.