Contractors funding property tax campaign

Construction companies, engineers & architects backing Measure CC.

By Brian Maquena

November 3, 2022

From campaign finance forms off the LA County Registrar’s Office website. Link in the story to the full document.

Construction companies and architects are funding Measure CC, a major property tax for small cities in southeast Los Angeles County.

The Cerritos College Board of Trustees voted in August to put Measure CC—a proposed $425 million bond—on the current November ballot. The bond measure will increase residents’ college property tax by about 60 percent in order to build new buildings. However, student enrollment is down by 23 percent, making detractors say that the new, expensive buildings are unnecessary.

From a presentation by Cerritos College President Jose Fierro showing enrollment having dropped 23 percent.

“We’ve all been here since 5 p.m. and how many students have we seen?” asked Marisa Perez, a Lakewood resident who sits on the board of trustees. “It’s wonderful that we’re going to have wonderful facilities for them, but if we don’t have students here to fill them, I don’t know if this is the right time.”

Perez surprisingly changed her mind and decided to support the property tax increase.

“During the Covid, we don’t have students coming back and everybody is in a hard time,” said Vice President Shin Liu, a Cerritos resident on the board. “We have a sewage problem - what will they (residents/voters) say? Two (previous) bonds, you didn’t fix that? We went through two bonds! The second bond should fix that! The first bond should fix the water problem!”

Liu and Trustee Zurich Lewis of La Mirada were the only trustees to vote in August against putting Measure CC on the ballot. Trustees from Downey, Norwalk and Bellflower voted with Perez in favor of the measure.

Despite the bad economy and the lower student enrollment, there is a massive push for Measure CC. An organization calling themselves “Friends of Cerritos College - Yes on CC” have put up campaign signs in favor of the property tax.

However, it turns out that CONTRACTORS who may BENEFIT from the building projects are the very ones FUNDING the Measure CC campaign.

Campaign finance records, go here to see them for yourself, show the following companies and organizations funding what appears to be a self-serving property tax increase:

• Tilden-Coil Constructors donated $49,000;

• HPI Architecture donated $20,000;

• Southern California IBEW-NECA Labor Management Cooperation Committee donated $10,000;

• Ridge Landscape Architects, Inc. donated $2,500;

• MHP Structural Engineers, Inc. donated $7,500;

• PS2 Inc., a construction and painting firm, donated $7,500;

• Laborers International Union of North America Local 1309 Issues PAC donated $5,000.

Four other organizations donated another $11,500.

Is this right? That is for the voters to decide through next Tuesday. Be sure to make your voices heard at the ballot box.