Valley Center OKs Tax Plan

Valley Center property owners approved a special district that will impose a tax on buyers of future homes to pay for new school construction, the county registrar of voters reported Wednesday.

The district, called a Mello-Roos district, will tax detached homes $750 a year and condominiums $350 a year. The creation of the 4,177-acre district was approved by an 83% vote. “We worked very hard to get this passed, so we are obviously very happy. We feel like this is an equitable way to proceed, and hopefully, we’ll get some additional funding out of it,” said Jeff Mulford, superintendent of the Valley Center Union Elementary School District.

The vote was limited to the 36 owners of land in the Mello-Roos district, with each landowner given one vote for every acre owned.

The district does not tax any existing homes, but will be levied against all new homes built in the district. It is unclear how many homes will be built, or how much money the district will raise in its 30-year life.

Although the proposition easily achieved the two-thirds vote required for approval, with 3,163 votes cast in favor and 537 against, only 10 landowners voted to approve the measure, while nine opposed it, the registrar’s office said.

The intent in creating the Mello-Roos district is to anticipate where development will occur and plan for the funding and location of schools to serve the new population. Valley Center becomes the fifth school district in the county in the last five years to have such a tax-raising entity.