By now, you should have received your special, mail-only ballot for the Measure E parcel tax vote. Ballots are due in to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters by June 22. And there are no …

Alameda voters are being asked to decide whether to approve a replacement parcel tax that could bring as much as $14 million year into the Alameda Unified School District’s coffers for each of the next …

Perhaps some of the most persistent questions around Measure E are who pays – and how much.

The Board of Education’s decision to put a new parcel tax on the ballot – Alameda Unified’s third parcel tax request in a decade – has prompted questions about how much money the school district has and how it is spent.

Debbie George says she and other business and commercial property owners who have been fighting the school district’s Measure H and Measure E parcel taxes aren’t opposed to the idea of a parcel tax. They say they just want a tax that’s fair.

Even before Shivaun McDonald’s family joined Otis Elementary School, she and her kids used to sit on their front porch in the mornings, drinking tea and watching other children walk by.

“We came to Alameda because we heard the schools are good, and it’s a very family-oriented community,” McDonald says.

Alameda has more than its fair share of hot-button political issues. But few are as emotional as the upcoming ballot for Measure E, the replacement school parcel tax. And the stakes couldn’t be higher.
The tax …