Editor:
In today’s article, you make the wildly incorrect statement that Malibu provides 30 percent of the District’s revenue. Not even Malibu folks would make that claim.
The District’s total revenue is about $147 million and property tax revenue is about $94 million. In order for Malibu to supply 30% of the total, they would have to be contributing about $44 million. The only measurable Malibu sources are property tax and parcel tax. Thirty percent of the parcel tax is about $3.8 million, which means that the Malibu property tax revenue would have to be over $40 million or about 42.5% of the total property tax revenue, which is absurd. You entirely ignore the $22 million projected to come from the City of Santa Monica and $2 million from the Santa Monica Education Foundation, among funds from other sources.
Malibu sometimes claims it contributes 30% of the property tax revenue which is also likely incorrect. Under ever-shifting State laws relating to the allocation of countywide property tax since Prop. 13 passed in 1978, the more likely reality is that there’s no way to determine how much of the property taxes paid by Malibu property owners finds its way to the District.
As stated by the State Legislative Analyst’s Office: “To implement Proposition 13, the Legislature enacted the AB 8 property tax allocation system. A single countywide rate of 1 percent replaced the numerous individual government tax rates. Although taxpayers gained the assurance that their rate could not increase from year-to-year, they lost the ability to see which entities receive revenues from their payments.”
Tom Larmore, Santa Monica
