48 Hills/ October 2020/ Garrett Leahy
“On Monday, a coalition of roughly 30 teachers, nurses, and parents gathered outside of the Bank of America building at 555 California Street – a building owned in part by Donald Trump — to support Prop 15.
The ballot measure would amend the California state constitution to tax commercial and industrial properties, except those zoned as commercial agriculture and residential properties, based on their market value rather than their purchase price. Residential properties would keep the 2 percent annual property tax increase threshold for residential properties established in 1978 by Prop 13.
The owners of the Bank of America building, Vornado Realty Trust and Trump, currently pay $11.7 million a year less in local property taxes than they would if the building’s property tax was calculated based on its market value, a recent 48hills investigation shows.”
“This here building steals $11 million a year from our schools and communities,” said Frank Lara, a bilingual fifth-grade teacher at Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 Community School, a dual-language Spanish immersion elementary school in the Mission. “We’re struggling year after year to have enough staff, and that’s being short just $60,000, can you imagine if we had $11 million for our school?”
