Time to expedite Katz case Time to expedite Katz case (August 12, 2005)

For well over a year and a half, Saratoga resident Aaron Katz has been playing out his fantasy, which is to have the courts throw out the results of two Mountain View parcel tax or bond issue elections because be was not allowed to vote, even though he owns property in the districts involved.

The Katz argument is tantalizingly simple: No taxing jurisdiction -- like the Mountain View-Whisman School District or the El Camino Hospital District -- should be able to initiate a tax without allowing all property owners who will pay that tax an opportunity to vote. That premise has been before Judge Kevin McKenney in Superior Court since January of last year, and although both cases have been dismissed on technicalities, the merits of the Katz argument have yet to be addressed.

In recent months, Voice reporters have written many stories about the suits, which have cost the school district more than $100,000 to defend its $1.6 million parcel tax and delayed the sale of $148 million in bonds for the hospital's earthquake retrofit project. And now that Judge McKenney has found that Katz did not properly follow procedures in filing the two cases, it opens the door for protracted litigation and a dramatic increase in costs for both districts, which are targets in the case through no fault of their own.

What Katz is ultimately attacking is the long-accepted way of financing bond issues and parcel taxes throughout the state. The tax and bond elections are overseen by the county officials, and while it is the public bodies overseeing the school and hospital districts that decided to hold such elections, oversight and determination of residency is up to the elections supervisor.

Long-standing law in such elections has established that only residents of a district can vote in that district, regardless of whether the vote is to elect a president or assess a parcel tax. Clearly, as an attorney, Katz was aware that his Mountain View property would be subject to parcel taxes and bond assessments, and that unless his home of record was in the city, he would not be given an opportunity to vote on such issues.

But whether he knew this or not, Katz has now decided to challenge this historical method of determining who is eligible to vote in such elections. Unfortunately, it may take many months or years before Mountain View taxpayers know who is right.

In the meantime, Katz, an attorney who represents himself and who has vowed to take the matter to the Supreme Court, will continue to disrupt the public's business over whether he should have been able to vote on a parcel tax that would have cost him $375. We hope the courts recognize the importance of making an expedited ruling in this matter, so that Mountain View and the hundreds of other districts or cities that could be affected will know if the rules are going to change.

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