CUSD Board Approves Continuation of Talega Levy for Additional Year

Time would be used to come up with facilities maintenance plan

By Jim Shilander

The CUSD Board of Trustees approved continuing a special tax levy in the Talega area for at least one more year, as the district begins to formulate plans for how to address needed upkeep at San Clemente High School.

The special taxes, which help fund capital improvements at San Clemente High School, San Juan Hills High School and Vista Del Mar Middle School and Elementary School, could have been allowed to lapse, but district staff said it would be difficult to put another levy in place if the board had voted to eliminate it. The bonds have been in place since 2001. The planned levy for the 2013-2014 school year is $4.7 million.

Trustee Jim Reardon noted that the district lacked an updated plan for maintenance of facilities, and that list of needed improvements, which was last completed in 2008, should be updated in order to specifically address what maintenance issues needed to be completed at the high school. He also expressed concern that the same fund had previously been tapped for other projects outside the scope of the school district, such as roads.

Trustee Amy Hanacek, who sent her own children to SCHS, said she felt voting to close the levy would make it difficult to address the number of maintenance issues at the school, the oldest in the district.

Superintendent Joseph Farley echoed Hanacek’s comments, noting that without a definitive plan in place to address the necessary improvements, losing the levy could make formulating a plan more difficult.

Reardon acknowledged these concerns but also didn’t want to see the fund open indefinitely.

“If we turn it into a piggybank, we will get some blowback,” Reardon said.

Trustee Anna Bryson said while the school was in distress, the board also had a duty to make life easier for taxpayers whose students attended the school.

The district will work on developing a new facilities inventory in the next year, in time for the next vote on continuing the levy. San Clemente resident and Board President John Alpay, who had to recuse himself from discussion on the vote, has previously proposed the building of a new pool at the high school, in addition to necessary maintenance work. A number of speakers at the meeting from the arts community at SCHS advocated for the construction of a new performing arts center, which Alpay had previously stated could be done in conjunction with the city.