Community Colleges in the Post‐13 Era: Institutional Responses to Tax Limitation

Abstract

The Jarvis-Gann amendment to the California constitution cut property taxes by almost 60%. The state's community-college system, the largest and among the oldest in the country, depends heavily on property taxes, and consequently faces a constrained future. This study sought some indication of the responses these constraints would bring. Based on six case studies, in the late summer of 1978, colleges' major responses appear to have been general cuts across all programs and activities. Where these were insufficient, colleges often cut community-service activities, eliminated weekend or evening classes, spent excess reserves, or deferred major expenditures for maintenance or compliance with legal obligations. The result, for the present, is roughly the same mix and level of services, although convenience and flexibility have been reduced. The future looks much bleaker: salaries, at first effectively frozen by state law, will have to increase; state support in lieu of property taxes will stabilize or decline; and enrollments will also stabilize or decline. In these circumstances colleges will either have to reduce the services they provide or, as the concluding analysis in this paper suggests, seek legislative permission to begin charging moderate tuition.