Tam Union school district scales back bond hopes

Tamalpais Union High School District trustees will try one more time for an even smaller Measure A bond proposal for the November ballot.

The decision came after recent polling results from a retooled $440 million bond plan did not improve much beyond the surveys for the $517 million proposal in March that failed to get the required 55% approval from voters.

Of 613 poll respondents from May 6 to 14, the final average likely approval for the proposed bond was at 55.7%, or just slightly above the 55% threshold. There was a 3.94% margin of error.

“I had hoped for a better improvement for the scaled-back measure,” Corbett Elsen, the district’s fiscal services services director, said at the board meeting Tuesday. “I’m disappointed in the results. I thought they would have been stronger.”

Elsen said he will comb through the proposal again to identify only the most “critical” improvements, he said. Those include such things as repairs to roofs and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems and upgrades to access for disabled people.

“There are many more needs than just roof repairs,” he said. “I will keep in all the things that are critical for the safety of our students and staff.”

Other needs include such items as information technology upgrades, electrical work and athletic field turf replacements.

Elsen said he will offer a new bond plan at the board meeting on June 11. If trustees give the go-ahead, he will prepare a draft proposal for the ballot for board review on June 25, with action to be taken on Aug. 6 to approve placing it on the ballot.

The last date to place a measure on the Nov. 5 ballot is Aug. 9. If the district does not go forward in November, the next opportunity will not be until 2026.

“If this doesn’t pass, I don’t know how we can continue to be the district that we are,” said Tara Taupier, the superintendent.

Without the bond measure, at the very least, the district would have to spend $80 million out of its general fund to repair roofs and other systems that must be fixed within the next five years, she said.

That would mean that drastic budget cuts would be needed, since the general fund is already tasked to pay for salaries and programs, Taupier said. Facilities work is supposed to come out of a bond, she said.

“The information is hard to get out,” Taupier said.

One of the problems is explaining that the rate of the proposed Tam Union bond would be about the same as with earlier bonds passed in the Sausalito Marin City School District and San Rafael City Schools, but with up to 90,000 voters in the Tam Union district, the total amount is much larger.

“It’s always a challenge to provide transparent and accurate information to such a large community,” board president Leslie Harlander said.

Harlander said, however, that reducing the bond to $80 million would just be a “knee-jerk reaction” and would not cover the district’s real and true needs.

Charles Heath, the district’s consultant, said it appeared from the polling that voters were still set in their opinions made in March, even though the new tax was somewhat lower.

The $440 million bond would cost taxpayers $25 per $100,000 of assessed value per property annually. That was down from $30 per $100,000 of assessed value for the $517 million initial plan.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” Heath said. “Voters are pretty entrenched.”

Heath said the November ballot will be “crowded” and there will be a lot of competition from several state bond measures and potentially local parcel tax proposals from the Ross Valley School District and the Sausalito Marin City School District.

“It’s a really long ballot,” he said. “There are 20 statewide initiatives, statewide and local tax proposals and SMART will be going for a sales tax.”

Trustee Cynthia Roenisch said the district needs to run an aggressive campaign, going to door-to-door, to “undo the messaging” and correcting misinformation given to voters in March by the opposition.

For example, the idea that there was no senior exemption in Measure A was “almost a red herring” because state law does not allow senior exemptions for any school bond measures, only for parcel taxes, Roenisch said.

“We are facing that we have to educate and re-educate our voters,” Roenisch said.

Trustee Kevin Saavedra said a visit to the Tamalpais High School campus in Mill Valley could be convincing to voters if they took the time.

“Describing those buildings as old doesn’t do it justice,” he said. “Those buildings are dilapidated.”

He added that the district will need to do a lot of work in the Ross Valley, where “a lot of people feel misled by the lies and misinformation.”

Heath said he thought there could be some voters turned around, but only “on the edges.”

“One of the disappointing things was that a lot of the misinformation has stuck,” he said.

Resident Nancy McCarthy, who spoke during the public comment period, said that while wealthy Marin homeowners might find the proposed tax affordable, many Marin residents are just struggling to get by.

“A lot of people are having a difficult time paying for food and gas,” she said. “People are drowning.”

Mimi Willard of the advocacy group Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers agreed. COST was a major opponent of Measure A in March.

“A modified Tam Union proposal will probably do worse in November than in March because of the tax tsunami that COST sees unfolding in the fall election, when it’s likely that each Marin voter will be confronted with multiple new taxes seeking their approval,” Willard said in an email.

She suggested the district “either attempt to pass one limited to only the $80 million in urgent needs they claim to have for leaking roofs, HVAC and electrical, or wait until they can hone a better-thought-out proposal for 2026.”