One Property Owner, One Property Tax Vote?

Have you heard of Aaron Katz? He owns various real estate properties in Santa Clara County, but wasn't able to vote on tax increases related to many of those properties because the elections weren't in his home town of Saratoga. Meanwhile, people who did live in the areas holding the elections could vote on the tax increases, regardless of whether they owned any property.

Katz has filed several lawsuits claiming that only property owners should have been allowed to vote on property and parcel tax increases, and that those property owners should have been allowed to vote regardless of their place of residence.

A few years ago, I was a party to a couple of email exchanges with Katz where he outlined his legal claims. If I understood them correctly, he appealed to some basic protection clauses in the California Constitution. At the time I thought Katz had some good points about how property tax voting should work (ideally), but that his claims were at odds with city charter law and a long history of how elections are normally conducted in this country. But, I'm far from an expert on this topic.

Last Friday, a judge dismissed several of Katz' lawsuits. Unfortunately, for both Katz and for local government officials, the judge based his dismissal on paperwork technicalities, leaving the basic question unresolved:

San Jose Mercury News: "Judge dismisses tax lawsuit: SANTA CLARA COUNTY SCHOOLS, COLLEGES AND HOSPITAL WEIGH IMPACT"
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