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cont...
Property Rights & LAFCO as the Judge
It is illegal to deny political rights to non-property owners,
just as it is to deny civil rights to people because of their
ethnicity. But in the real world, ethnic minorities are discriminated
against and outside political authorities weigh the opinions of
resident-property owners greater than they do tenants in matters
relating to Isla Vista.
 This
bias has assisted the IVA leadership in all of their battles against
the majority-residents of I.V., and the IVA leadewrship was counting
on this bias when they asked the County's Local Agency Formation
Commission (LAFCO) to detach the R-1 area of Isla Vista from the
boundaries of the IVRPD.
The LAFCO membership of the time was quite familiar with the Isla
Vista situation, because most of them had been on the Commission
when it had turned down Isla Vista's second cityhood election
request just a few months before the IVA's detachment request.
County Assessor's Role
Besides their alienation from the majority tenants of Isla Vista,
the homeowners were angry because they were being forced to pay
more taxes than the rest of town due to the unbelievable unfairness
of the County Assessor. Although the standard practice of that
pre-Prop. 13 era was to re-evaluate properties every four years
for purposes of assessing property taxes, Isla Vista had not been
re-assessed for seven years. Some people speculated that the County
Assessor had Isla Vista's re-assessment intentionally delayed
in order to make the property tax base of the proposed City of
Isla Vista look low during the LAFCO proceedings. In those times,
cities depended a great deal more on property taxes than they
do today.
But shortly after the second I.V. cityhood election request was
turned down by LAFCO, the County Assessor announced that the R-1
section of Isla Vista would be re-assessed for that year's taxpaying
purposes, but that the rest of I.V. would not be re-assessed until
at least a year later. Because it had been seven years since the
previous assessment, property taxes were going to increase at
least 50% in the R-1. In addition, because the 1975 Park Bond
had passed in the previous November's election, it meant that
R-1 property owners would be paying two or three times the amount
for these bonds for the first year than would similar property
owners elsewhere in town.
It was all too galling to the IVA leaders. After all, they had
been vehemently opposed to the passage of the bonds and to the
election on a city, but now they were being forced to pay more
for these bonds than if the city had been established!
The IVA wanted out of the Park District!
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