I do not agree with the schools asking for a 10-plus percent increase in school funding. I can understand asking for more than is needed in hopes of a compromise of something less. I also understand that they have an increase in current expenses, the same as the county has. I believe that if the county had funded the $700,000 needed for current expenses, we would not have had the expense of mediations. The county did not provide the funds to meet the current expenses for the schools.
The schools have to exercise more fiscal responsibility when you consider the funds that have been lost through poor decisions by school administrators.
I want to remind you, Chairman Holden stated that there would no tax increase between evaluations. He has negotiated in the mediation agreement, that there would be a referendum to fund the technology for the schools amounting to a three-cent increase per $100 of valuation, with each cent representing $750,000 or a total of $2,250,000. The referendum is his way of not accepting the responsibility for increasing taxes. I was on the Technology Committee, and the funding was to be phased in over several years, not all at once.
Mr. Holden, you advised the commissioners that the revenue-neutral rate was 45.5 cents, plus two cents for an anticipated Medicaid increase — which we have never heard anything about — when in actuality revenue neutral was 40.5 cents. That is $3,750,000 above revenue-neutral, plus you added a half-percent to our sales tax that the county gets.
Taxes defy the law of gravity; “What goes up, does not come down.”
Elton C. Turner
Vass
