Residents of Retirement Havens Resist Paying Taxes for Schools

SURPRISE, Ariz. — The marching band at Dysart High School has had to fold, and there would have been no football team last fall--or basketball team this winter--had nearby residents not chipped in. At the middle and elementary schools, physical education and music are no longer taught. And throughout the 4,300-student Dysart district, equipment is lacking and teachers are leaving for better-paying jobs.

What is happening here in this suburb west of Phoenix is, to some, a cautionary tale about what can result when the state Legislature allows school financing to fall short. But to others, it is a case of greed: They say many residents of the exclusive retirement enclaves built in this sunny golfers’ paradise are reluctant to pay for the education of someone else’s children.

As the American population ages--with the number of citizens 65 and over expected to double by 2030--and more retirement communities spring up across the country, the question of who should foot the bill for public schools is bound to spark more bitter debates and widen the gulf between the generations.

“There are a lot of sweet old people out there, but there are some who don’t want to pay taxes,” said Alicia Alonzo, 18, a senior who edits the Dysart High School newspaper. “It’s not like hating old people, but you feel this type of resentment. You’re in school and there are things you can’t do and you see it’s because of these people, so the money isn’t there. It’s kind of ridiculous because everybody pays taxes and they’re trying to squirm out of it.”

Already 1 in 8 Americans are 65 or over. And while many exist on fixed incomes, dependent largely on Social Security, the image of a pitiful retiree subsisting on canned cat food is fading. According to census data, the average income of a household headed by someone 65 or over is $29,280. Although that compares to $51,921 for households headed by someone younger than 65, 10.8% of America’s elderly citizens were living below the poverty level in 1996, about the same as the 11.4% of those age 18 to 64.

School tax breaks for the elderly have long been in place. In Texas, for example, the portion of property taxes paid to support schools is frozen at the amount a citizen is paying on his or her 65th birthday. New York state has had a partial exemption on property taxes paid to support schools since 1966 for residents 65 and over with annual household incomes of less than $18,500. Under a new plan pushed by Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, and passed by the state Legislature last year, New Yorkers 65 and over with annual household incomes of less than $60,000 will qualify for a 45% cut in the share of their taxes that goes to schools.

But perhaps nowhere in the country is the tension between retirees and schools as high as here in Arizona, the birthplace of retirement developments, where 13% of the state’s residents are 65 and over, and where the elderly population in recent years has increased by 23%.

Here in retirement land, where golf carts are a favored means of transportation and “I’m Spending My Children’s Inheritance” is a common bumper sticker, residents are leading the way in challenging their role as school supporters. Retirees in other areas of the country are watching to see how well they succeed.

Residents of an affiliated retirement community being built in Georgetown, Texas, about 40 miles north of Austin, already have said they want a bigger tax exemption from the school district and have contacted leaders here for advice.

“They’re being selfish [and] self-centered,” said Surprise Mayor Joan Shafer, who is herself 68, about residents of the Sun City West expansion area and other retirement communities who want to pull out of the school district for taxation purposes. “The children are being held hostage while the adults argue about who’s going to pay.”

Three times in recent years, bond referendums to build new schools in the Dysart district have been defeated, largely by older voters. What is more critical, however, is that for each of the last three years, approvals for budget overrides that enable the district to ask local taxpayers to pay up to 10% over the schools’ budget, a common way of operating in Arizona, have been denied here.

Eighty percent of Arizona’s school districts have secured that extra 10% a year from their local voters as they await a new financing plan from state lawmakers. Here, school officials said, the voters’ refusal to pay the overrides has meant that Dysart has had to slash $2 million from its $16-million annual budget. As a result, programs not mandated by the state--such as music, physical education and sports or band programs--have had to be eliminated.

But nothing seems to have polarized area residents as much as the most recent development, a bid by the local Citizens for Tax Equity (CTE) that forced a vote March 10 on whether to withdraw from the school district altogether. The measure failed, with the retirement community voting overwhelmingly for it and the rest of the district against it.

The vote followed months of emotional debate over the retirees’ efforts to abandon the district which serves about 4,200 students--nearly 70% of them Hispanic--from El Mirage, Surprise, Luke Air Force Base and Waddell.

The potential pullout of about 4,500 retiree homes, with an average value of about $170,000 and representing more than a third of Dysart’s property tax base, would have thrown the schools into financial crisis.

“It’s definitely taken the flavor of retirees against students. It’s been very divisive,” said Dysart Supt. Jesus de la Garza.

Among other things, de la Garza already has had to halve the number of school nurses and librarians and slash $110,000 from the athletic program. Because of overcrowding, he predicted, he may have to start transferring students out of their neighborhood schools.

The retirees’ move is not without precedent here.

De-annexation leaders, who recently gained control of the local school board by a 3-to-2 margin, say they are only trying to correct a situation in which they pay three times more in property taxes than other nearby retirees who have withdrawn. More than a decade ago, retirees in Sun City and the original Sun City West, both developed by the Del Webb Corp., the pioneers in building retirement communities, withdrew from Dysart and another local school district.

Robert Koch, a retired federal government lawyer from the Washington area who resigned as head of CTE when he won a school board seat in November, said the retirees’ intent has been misconstrued: They are not against paying taxes and they are not spurred by racist motives, he said. Instead, they are trying to force the state Legislature, which is under court order to revamp school financing by June, to take responsibility.

The owner of a $103,000 home, school officials said, pays about $380 a year toward schools in the Dysart district.

“You can’t run a country, much less a school district, when some of the people are paying a little, some people are paying a little more, and some are paying a lot,” said Koch, 59. “You have to have roughly the same level of taxation; that’s what this country is all about. I don’t see us as enemies. The people in the school district have chosen to attack the messenger and ignore the message.”

But that view gets no sympathy from opponents. One reason may be the retirement communities where many of the tax-resistant elderly here live.

“The point is to supply them with a lifestyle where you can recreate for the rest of your life, what you have left of it, and leave your cares and troubles behind,” said Pam Justice, 44, a Dysart school board member for 12 years who also is president of the Arizona School Boards Assn. She was the target of a recall vote led by angry retirees; it, too, failed. “And so they come here with that mind-set and they leave whatever sense of community they had where they came from. They left it there because their families are still there, their children and grandchildren, and that is still home. This is just where they live right now.”

Despite the bitter conflicts, residents on both sides of the issue stress that the elderly are some of the most active and dedicated volunteers with youth in the community, a pattern that apparently holds true throughout the country.

Ryan Peterson, a spokesman for Del Webb Sun Cities-Phoenix, said that, among other things, the retirees knit blankets for needy children and donate time to local hospitals and schools. And the elderly were among local residents who raised $60,000 to keep some of Dysart High School’s sports teams playing this year.

That community spirit was no comfort to the victors, however.

The Rev. Mitchell Eickmann, the only other member of the five-person Dysart school board who wanted to keep the retirement community in the district, said he was pleased with the results but afraid those representing Sun City West would try to sabotage the schools with funding cuts. A majority of the board members represent the neighborhood.

“I have a hard time believing that since they’ve lost this election that they’re going to all of the sudden change their feelings about the school district. I think they will definitely make some vindictive moves against the district because they didn’t get their way in the vote,” he said.

He fears a recall effort against him next.