Alameda Parcel Tax Passes, Staving Off School Closures
Affirmative vote brings tears of joy from schools superintendent
Alameda schools Superintendent Kirsten Vital broke down Tuesday night as she spoke to volunteers for the Measure A school parcel tax campaign. But unlike the night nine months ago when the school district’s last parcel tax try narrowly failed, these were tears of joy.
Voters approved the tax Tuesday night, with 68.43 percent of the 18,818 voters who cast ballots registering “yes” votes, according to unofficial results. Roughly 45 percent of Alameda’s 41,609 registered voters turned out for the special election.
“I just thought about so many bad things that could happen for our children. And we just can’t have that,” Vital told a crowd of ebullient campaign volunteers who spilled down the steps of Tucker’s Ice Cream during a post-campaign event Tuesday night.
The school district will capture an estimated $12 million a year for each of the seven years the tax is in effect. Without it, Vital and other school leaders said they would be forced to close schools, raise class sizes and slash programs.
Opponents of the tax said it unfairly gives bigger property owners a tax break while pushing their tax burden off on homeowners and small business owners, and they questioned whether the cuts school district officials said would come without the tax would be made. On Tuesday night, they said the tax will delay needed reforms.
Hank E. Panky
This is just sad. Sad at so many levels. They crush the public school system by whatever the means, budget, taxes, union, salary cuts. At the end of the day, the children are the victims. Then, they turn around and levy a tax on the people who are being kicked out of unions and have their salaries and benefits reduced and the parents whose children are being "left behind." Whatever happened to taxing the corporations, the rich and the church? They only pay 11% while we poor working schmucks pay about 50%. If the politicos had the testicular fortitude to do what is good for the people, they would have collected those taxes, closed the gap and have enough money to offer state of the art education to our children, our future generation, our doctors, our lawyers, our engineers, our teachers. At the rate we're going, the next generation will end up in the fields picking grapes and tomatoes. What a tragedy!
Patrick Barnes
MK Ultra, did it ever dawn on you that the problem is spending AND taxation. You people have already spent yourself into oblivion more than the rest of the country. What rich, corporations and churches do you expect to tax with this? They won't take that. They will leave or fail. I've never heard of a place where you can tax yourself into prosperity. There is a reason there are problems. You spend way too much on too many things and property bears the price of the emporer's new clothes while people are paid far too much for what they do, but that is just the tip of the issue.