ELDER ACTION Educates Ashby Village Members About Yes on Prop 15
By Rochelle Lefkowitz
In Election 2020 there’s a California ballot measure where we can have a real impact.
But big corporate opponents of Prop 15—Schools & Communities First—are targeting older women voters, especially homeowners. Yes, us.
Their direct mail and Facebook posts warn us that unless we vote down the measure that would bring $12 billion in new corporate property tax dollars each year for our state’s public schools and local governments, we soon won’t be able to afford the reason we joined Ashby Village: to age in our beloved homes and neighborhoods.
But, thanks to Ashby Village’s ELDER ACTION’s Prop 15 Task Force, says Ashby Village Board Member and ELDER ACTION co-chair Rochelle Lefkowitz, “We’re old enough to know better!”
And, since August 18, when Evolve Campaign Director Ben Grieff addressed us, we REALLY know why to say Yes on Prop 15—and we hope you will, too!
Over a year ago, ELDER ACTION created a Prop 15 Task Force. Among our achievements, we—including our cherished member, the late Rachel Kahn-Hut--collected over 4,000 signatures to get Prop 15 back onto California’s 2020 ballot. We went to speaker training sessions. We sent letters asking our governor to go on the record supporting Prop 15.
Why are we so gung-ho for Prop 15? After all, we’re past the age of having children in California’s public schools. And as Village members, we’re committed to aging in our homes and neighborhoods.
Ask Ben Grieff. Evolve’s Campaign Director has spent the past 7 years helping change California’s political narrative around Prop 13. The once untouchable issue, called the third rail of California politics for over 40 years, has been the root cause of California’s public education system’s—and our hometowns’—drastic underfunding.
Ben recently joined us for a lively afternoon. He made clear what Prop 15 will--and won’t--do. He answered our questions. And he told us how we can get involved between now and November to help make history!
Some of us went to California’s public schools when they were among our nation’s finest. We built our careers on that solid foundation. This makes us want to help restore our state’s schools as our legacy to our descendants and all future students. And to revitalize our communities.
Ben’s not the kind of public interest leader who leaves you thinking “I could never be as persuasive as he is!”. He does something far more unusual and effective. He believes in us! He knows we’re the best people to inform and engage people who already trust us. So, he equipped us with the key facts and just the words and images we need to the inspire the people we know. Like our Village members, volunteers and donors and those of California’s 60 + other Villages. Members of our book groups, churches and synagogues. Our friends and neighbors, co-workers past and present.
After thanking Ashby Village ELDER ACTION for being such great partners on the Yes on Prop 15 Campaign, Ben wondered whether some of us were here when Prop 13 was passed in 1978—including a major corporate loophole. He then explained how Prop 15, which will be the second proposition on our 2020 ballot, maintains all Prop 13’s protections for all residential properties—from trailers and vacation homes, to multiunit apartment buildings and assisted living facilities.
Next, his PowerPoint slide of Disneyland highlighted how this corporate property has not been reassessed since 1975, while the average California homeowner pays 8 times more than we did back then.
Prop 13, Ben reminded us, was put in place to protect people, not large corporations.
But California is the only state in the U.S. that reassesses corporate property only when it changes hands.
Ben also showed us how buildings in Oakland, for example, within two blocks of each other, bought at different times, range in property tax rates from $264/sq. ft to $71/sq. ft.
Closing loopholes like these, Ben explained, would reclaim $12 billion a year in our state’s corporate property taxes, 40% of which would go directly to California’s public schools and 60% of which would go to our local communities, for things like BART districts, fire, water, road repairs and the like. It would close loopholes that have been around for almost half a century, so that companies would at last pay their fair share of state property tax.
To help small businesses, he added, Prop 15 would offer them the largest tax cut in a generation, by eliminating the state tax on personal business equipment. Plus, the new tax rate would only apply to businesses that own property worth over $3 million.
Ben emphasized that the new tax dollars would not get lost in the black hole of Sacramento, but go directly to our local school boards and local government. He told us that Alameda County, for example, would get $715. 6 million dollars every year if Prop 15 passes.
And then he told us what untruths to expect to hear from Prop 15’s opponents—how it would cause companies to leave California, how it would lead to residential property tax increases, or how it will increase consumer prices—and why none of those are true. Instead Ben told us to carefully consider the sources of what we hear—and why there’s such broad-based support for Prop 15—from the Firefighters and the PTA, to the League of Women Voters and the California ACLU and hundreds more well-respected organizations.
Our questions for Ben ranged from whether the Governor has yet come out to publicly support Prop 15 (“not yet; he did when running for Governor; both the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the Assembly have”) and to what oversight there will be for the complex way money flows (“we’re not going to change any formulas, we’re just increasing the pie”) to whether low income schools will bet more money (“yes!”).
We came that Tuesday afternoon with the time, experience, energy and passion for social justice. We left confident we could stand up to the scare mail, to the tough questions, to the flat out lies meant to stop us from voting for Prop 15.
We also left with this Prop 15 “To Do” list:
- Call Governor Newsom—916-445-2841--to urge him to support Prop 15!
Say if you’re a member of Ashby Village.
- Encourage friends to watch the recording of Ben’s 8/18 presentation to us on YouTube at (https://youtu.be/cyI6XCkkmA4).
- Join CARA (California Alliance for Retired Americans) peer-to-peer phone bank to encourage voters like you to Vote Yes on Prop 15. (510-663-4086 or cynthia.cara@gmail.com).
- Contact EVOLVE to write letters to persuade your peers to Vote Yes on Prop 15 (415-800-1155 or campaign@evolve-california.org)
- Sign up for Yes on Prop 15 speaker training with Laurel Tamariz at laurel@schoolsandcommunitiesfirst.org or 209-629-6127
- Contribute to Prop 15 through www.yes15.org.
Stay tuned for ELDER ACTION’s next Village wide event, on October 13, when CARA Executive Director Jodi Reid will bring us up to speed on the prospects for a state-funded long term care insurance plan—and join ELDER ACTION by emailing us at elderactionnow@gmail.com.