With just a month to go before the November election, Orinda voters appear to have mixed emotions about the Acalanes Union High School District parcel tax, Measure W.
The district’s early analysis showed support for the tax hovering at or above 70%, more than the two-thirds required for approval. But polling also identified tax fatigue and inflation as negatives weighing on voters.
Some Orinda voters feel the district is asking for money one too many times.
“I believe that we already pay for all this stuff and I have tax fatigue,” said Lupi Beagle, an Orinda parent with a son at Miramonte High School.
“As parents, we pay $2,000 per student for smaller classes and electives,” she said. “We’re already subsidizing [their] low funding. Isn’t Measure W just a repackaged version [of] Measure T that was voted down? There’s already two other parcel taxes that will be stacked on top of this (G & A).”
Marc Joffe, president of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association (Coco Tax) and a resident of the district, said his opposition is based on the district’s unwillingness to compromise. That was one reason the CoCo Tax board voted against it unanimously, he said.
“It basically gets down to the following: in 2025, the board proposed Measure T, a $130 parcel tax … and they spent $834,000 of taxpayer money to hold a special election to try to ram that through,” said Joffe. “They lost, and instead of coming back to voters with a smaller parcel tax to show that they are interested in compromising with people in the community dealing with affordability issues, they have the temerity to come back with a much larger parcel tax at $168.”
(Last year’s Measure T did lose, although it received 63.63% voter approval – not enough to clear the two-thirds requirement.)
With an infusion of approximately $5 million in one-time grant money from the state that will come from higher-than-anticipated Prop. 98 income tax proceeds, Joffe questions the need for the higher amount.
“They’re getting a massive windfall in 2026–2027, and yet they feel the need not only to come back with the same parcel tax, but a larger one,” he added.
While other voters express concerns, they said they are inclined to vote yes anyway.
“We have many school parcel taxes piled on top of each other and it feels like a lot every time we pay our property tax bill,” said an Orinda voter, who asked to remain anonymous. “However, we owe our kids the best education we can give them and our schools are a key part of our property values and the community’s wealth creation engine. So, we’ll vote for it, as we do every time it comes up.”
One key pocket of voters resides in Rossmoor, where few, if any, residents have children in local schools. Supporters of school tax and bond measures often worry about how Rossmoor, with its approximately 7,500 registered voters, will react to such initiatives.
“I think a significant number of Rossmoorians vote against school measures in general because they feel anything added to their property tax bill will put them in a deeper financial hole,” said Robert Hollis, a Rossmoor resident. “Everyone in Rossmoor is feeling the pinch of rapidly escalating homeowner association dues. Mine run more than $17,000 this year, and the bite increases each year well above the rate of inflation.”
Hollis said he will probably vote for the tax and then claim the senior exemption. He wishes more seniors knew about that option, which the district offers to anyone over age 65.
Maintaining local schools’ high quality was cited by several voters as a reason to support Measure W.
Sleepy Hollow resident Pat Hudson recently researched schools in Riverside, where her young grandchildren live, using the nonprofit school rating website GreatSchools.org. In the process, she compared the ratings to Orinda’s own schools.
“I became vastly more appreciative of how great all the schools are in Orinda,” she said. “Take my word for it. Very few high schools get 10 of 10 ratings, but Miramonte, Acalanes and Campolindo all do. That’s worth a parcel tax.”
Although he called parcel taxes “regrettably regressive,” Marty Glick, an Orinda Downs resident, acknowledged that “it is the only available mechanism for the schools to augment what they receive from the state.”
He thinks that in an affluent area like Orinda, parents who can afford it will switch to private schools if the public schools don’t deliver excellence, “weakening the system for all. The fact that $168 a year will produce an influx of $6 million makes it a worthwhile investment in our schools in my view.”
“This comes down to what we value,” said Nancy Kendzierski, a current Acalanes district board member who is unopposed for reelection in November.
“We believe every student deserves an excellent education. But AUHSD spends less than 72% of what California’s high school districts do, and it now shows: $4.2 million in cuts, larger class sizes, fewer options, and one librarian shared across four high schools. Our current parcel taxes and foundation giving have carried us this far, but they’re not filling the gap anymore. Measure W helps us get there, protecting the high quality of education in our local schools,” she said. “Without it, more cuts are coming.”
