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Prop BB is a cruel, costly scam. Proponents say it’s essential to save kids from leaky roofs and worse, but schools have ample maintenance budgets to address these issues. The real issue is the need for more classrooms to accommodate an influx of new students as a host of low-income housing projects come on line. Santa Monica should pay to accommodate these students out of its general fund. Slapping yet another tax on homeowners is beyond malicious. And in a city where renters vastly outnumber homeowners, it’s also bad economics. Making property owners pay for every new public expense is anachronistic and lazy politics. A century ago most wealth was in property and most property owners were wealthy. Today, the opposite is true. Contrary to the exaggerations of BB proponents, Malibu and Santa Monica are NOT “affluent communities” that can “afford this sacrifice.” They are middle-class communities populated by retirees, two-income households and middle-income families. We’re still paying tens of millions in bonded debt and parcel taxes. If BB and the state parcel tax pass, many seniors will need upwards of two or three months of social security just to pay their annual property taxes. Is this fair? Another ten years of such increases and these really will become affluent communities as no one but the rich will be able to afford to live here!

Helping our schools should not mean burdening seniors or sacrificing the economic diversity of our cities. Vote no on Prop BB.

Wade Major

Malibu

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I think Mr. Cummings should stop reading Sigmund Fraude. [sic] Few hunters go on “canned hunts” even those that can afford it. To equate many of the ills of human kind on men, please remember most men, in our society, are raised by women. Also, in this country women prisons are being filled as fast as they can be built.

Human nature is in many ways very base, we are animals. To envision a better world and to realize one may be the challenge humans will always face. To subscribe our ills on outside sources; guns, economic systems, sex, race and of course politicians, is usually the groundwork for making demagogues, which turn out far from ideal.

Len LaBounty

Santa Monica