Los Altos School District finance presentation: parcel tax, Prop. 13 and rising costs squeeze budget

A representative of the Citizens Advisory Committee for Finance (CACF), the parcel-tax oversight committee for the Los Altos School District (LASD), presented a slideshow to explain how the district is funded and the financial pressures it faces.

The presentation stressed that LASD is a community-funded (basic aid) district whose property-tax revenue exceeds the state's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) target; as a result the district retains excess property taxes and relies heavily on local measures, including a parcel tax that currently accounts for roughly 13% of district revenue. "Most of the charts and graphics that you'll see were pulled straight out of the LASD budget book," the CACF representative said.

The explanation centered on Prop. 13, which the presenter said reset assessed values in 1978 and capped annual assessed-value growth at 2% unless a property is sold or newly built. The presenter used two Los Altos homes as examples to show how assessed value diverges from market value: both homes were cited with market values near $4.8 million, but the presenter said one last sold in 1985 and had an assessed value of about $800,000 (generating roughly $10,000 total property tax with about $2,000 to LASD), while a home sold in 2021 had a much higher assessed…