What Kit Bobko Can Do For The Hermosa Beach Schools

Let me give you the punchline first. If Kit Bobko can solve the fiscal problems of the Hermosa Beach City School District, he will be a local hero. He will also show himself to be pro-education, and a roll-up-his-sleeves problem solver.

You can argue that it is not his job. I would counter that it is not my job to write about the subject, nor is it Russ Wilson's job to advocate for the Hermosa Beach schools on his blog Save Hermosa Schools.  It is not politicians' jobs to kiss babies, but they spend a ton of time doing that. The point is that it is a big fat emotionally loaded subject that brings together fiscal policy, taxing and spending, the vague notion of education, and the specific picture of happy children and parents. So what is and isn't his job is of no relevance. His town and current constituency needs this problem solved, and he can earn plenty of praise and positive comments when the press comes to Small Town Hermosa to ask the residents how they feel about their home town boy.

The brilliant State of California makes it very difficult to fund schools except in very specific ways. It is my understanding that the three options are:

1. A Sales Tax which must be passed at the county level, which sounds almost impossible;
2. A Parcel Tax - this would come to a few hundred dollars per parcel for 5 to 10 years - small peanuts if your mortgage is $3000 to $15,000 per year;
3. Donations

So if Kit Bobko wants to show his ability to help his constituency, and his ability to loosen the purse strings of big money donors which is essential in any run for high office, then getting some big private and corporate donors to kick in $5 million to permanently fix the Hermosa Beach City School District budget would accomplish both of those goals. Make it $10 million and I will start a relentless campaign to have a sports field or some kind of school facility or maybe an entire school named after Kit Bobko. That would certainly provide some positive press coverage for a budding United States Congressman.

Hermosa Beach City Council
Peter Tucker           Mayor                         peter@electpetertucker.com
Howard Fishman    Mayor Pro Tempore  kkfish@earthlink.net
Jeff Duclos             Councilmember         jeff@jeffduclos.com
Patrick "Kit" Bobko Councilmember         kit.bobko@gmail.com
Michael DiVirgilio    Councilmember         mdivir@gmail.com

Councilmembers' phone number (310) 318-0216
Councilmembers' fax number (310) 372-6186

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Fourth Estate + One

I am happy to report that there is another blog now covering the Hermosa Beach school district financial problems:

Save Hermosa Schools

Russ, the blogger, has a more sober straight forward approach than mine. That is good. Hopefully between us the voters of Hermosa Beach will be able to find something they like.

I glanced at the numbers he has for the current Hermosa Beach City School District budget. I have been casually looking for these numbers for a week, but I could not find them on the official school district site for some reason. I have not dug into the data, but it looks to me like the school district will be short by $133,000 this year?  Are we seriously calling this a problem? The leaders of Hermosa Beach can't figure out how to patch a $133,000 hole? That is only 1/5th of the Dog Catcher Budget!

Problem Solved

There are 7000 parcels and about 10,000 housing units in Hermosa Beach (please note that I am not even addressing the obligation of the business community, yet). So correct me if my math is wrong, but if we had a TAX (there, I said the T-word) of $13.30 per home or apartment per year, there would be no problem?

This almost seems like a joke to me. Nobody could be seriously considering allowing the value of the average home to fall by $150,000 or more (see studies in previous blog posts) in order to save $13 per year, could they?


Hermosa Beach City Council
Peter Tucker Mayor peter@electpetertucker.com
Howard Fishman Mayor Pro Tempore kkfish@earthlink.net
Jeff Duclos Councilmember jeff@jeffduclos.com
Patrick "Kit" Bobko Councilmember kit.bobko@gmail.com
Michael DiVirgilio Councilmember mdivir@gmail.com

Councilmembers' phone number (310) 318-0216
Councilmembers' fax number (310) 372-6186


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Kit Bobko Saves the Hermosa Beach School District?

We have good news, I think.  The Beach Reporter reports that Kit Bobko has discovered some interesting numbers in the city's budget:
http://www.tbrnews.com/articles/2011/02/24/hermosa_beach_news/news10.txt

It seems that Hermosa Beach spends $624,000 per year catching dogs, cats, and raccoons.  Yes, that is $1,710 per day, 365 days per year.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the exact dimensions and demographics of Hermosa Beach, the city is 1.3 or 1.4 square miles, and it has a population of about 20,000 people.  I would like to know how many furry critters are caught per year.  Then we could figure out what we are spending per furry critter caught, and compare that to the amount that Hermosa Beach itself spends on each student in the Hermosa Beach City School District.  If anybody has any statistics on this I would really like to see them.

I do not feel very threatened by cats, and I don't see why they need to be caught.  If there is a raccoon problem that I have never noticed, having never seen a raccoon in Hermosa Beach (though I have seen very slow moving Possums), then maybe home owners and businesses should be fined for leaving their garbage cans uncovered, just like people are ticketed for blocking the street sweepers from cleaning my street 100 times per year.  That could also head off any potential rat problem for which we might have to hire a Pied Piper to solve in the future.  I have heard that hiring Pied Pipers can be tricky business.

And as for dogs, make the owners pay if their dogs need to be caught.  Problem solved!  We now have a spare $624,000 for the schools!

This does make me wonder what else we are spending money on.  I know we inexplicably pitched in to buy an armored personnel carrier for the South Bay communities when defending the Surfer Statue against the terrorist onslaught was all the rage.  What did that total waste of money cost?  Has it ever been used?  How much are we spending to maintain it?

Keep up the good work Kit Bobko!  Digging into the city's finances may save us from having to sell out our children to LAUSD, the worst school district on Earth.  Two-thirds of a million here and two-thirds of a million there, and pretty soon we'll be talking about real money.


Hermosa Beach City Council
Peter Tucker Mayor peter@electpetertucker.com
Howard Fishman Mayor Pro Tempore kkfish@earthlink.net
Jeff Duclos Councilmember jeff@jeffduclos.com
Patrick "Kit" Bobko Councilmember kit.bobko@gmail.com
Michael DiVirgilio Councilmember mdivir@gmail.com
Councilmembers' phone number (310) 318-0216
Councilmembers' fax number (310) 372-6186

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