City Councilwoman Adrin Nazarian Friday introduced a motion seeking to place a proposed measure on the November ballot to tax private country clubs and golf courses across the city.
Nazarian said he got the idea after listening to an episode of the “Revisionist History” podcast by Malcolm Gladwell. The podcaster focused on the Brentwood Country Club, in which he asks why Angelenos jog on a narrow dirt track while hundreds of acres of green space sits behind a chain-link fence, subsidized by the 1978 tax bill, known as Proposition 13.
Proposition 13 capped property taxes at 1% of assessed value, which was set at its 1975 value, and limited annual increases to 2%.
“These private golf courses and country clubs are not paying their equitable share of taxes by exploiting a loophole — structuring their business as nonprofits to skate by on tax breaks they have no business receiving,” Nazarian said in a statement.
“Not only are the vast majority of Angelenos unable to afford membership at these elite clubs, they are being forced to carry someone else’s tax burden. This is fundamentally inequitable tax policy,” Nazarian added.
The councilman said that properties near one of these clubs are paying more than half of what these social clubs pay. While homes are a fraction of the size.
The Brentwood club is 320 acres. Homeowners are paying the bill for these country clubs, Nazarian said.
Nazarian says the proposed tax could support the city amid ongoing budgetary issues.
Six private country clubs together pay $811,000 a year in property taxes on nearly 1,000 acres of land worth more than $15 billion, according to Nazarian’s office. The councilman estimates that these property owners should be paying $139.9 million — more than 160 times what they currently pay.
“With the budgetary crises our city is facing, it’s time to think of new, creative ways to generate revenue to keep the services that we all rely on running,” Nazarian said in his statement.
He added that it’s important to “undo past inequitable tax policies.”
The motion is expected to be heard by the Rules, Elections, Intergovernmental Relations Committee.
City Council members are expected to vote on the initiative before June 28, with the goal of placing the measure on the November ballot for L.A. voters to approve.