From: Kristen Brown
Columbus
Why are teachers’ pay adjustments and school resource officers contingent on increasing taxes with another property tax? If these expenditures are essential, why are they first on the chopping block?
Why is Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation not reducing “outside the classroom” services or postponing plans for another multi-million dollar athletic facility? Why not raise private money and/or ask voters if we want a tax increase for these expenditures instead?
BCSC contends that retaining five invaluable school resource officers (SROs) depends on a tax increase. No other expenditure can be cut before all five SROs? Really?
Our governor promises to find funds to significantly increase teachers’ pay next year. If so, do you believe that BCSC would actually end the local tax increase? I don’t.
Refer to what BCSC did when it raised $89 million in 2008 in a special property tax above the tax caps for renovations at two high schools. Bids came in several million dollars under estimates. Did they decide to not take those millions from us? Of course not, they spent millions of dollars on “extras.”
Over the last eight years, teachers have received annual raises exceeding 2% on average. This year’s raise was 2.5%. The referendum would fund proposed extraordinary pay increases of 7% to 31%.
Many people deserve to make more money, especially since everyone’s local taxes and healthcare costs are increasing significantly. I have no doubt our teachers deserve more money.
But the school administration and board do not deserve a tax increase to fund teachers’ extraordinary pay adjustments by embarking on the latest Chicken Little routine to raise local taxes.
They should get their priorities straight: teachers’ pay and SROs before more bloat in bureaucrats and buildings.
When property taxes were capped, the state sales tax increased to 7%, the second-highest in the nation, to fund the schools’ operations.
This is the school corporation’s fourth effort to increase property taxes outside the tax caps since then. Other public officials have raised our local income taxes twice for a staggering 75% increase.
The justifications are always the same: “We need more money! It’s only a few bucks a month.”
But it all adds up and people’s pockets aren’t bottomless.
In my 2011 campaign, I promised to eliminate the trash tax.
“Only a few bucks a month” is actually meaningful to many folks and city government didn’t need the money, just some fiscal discipline.
Countless financially well-off people told me they were happy paying the trash tax because it was a needed investment in the community.
So rather than eliminate the fees altogether, I made them optional tax-free donations to the city still payable monthly via the utility bills.
The result: Only 66 out of more than 16,000 households continued to voluntarily pay the trash fees. Only one elected official paid the fees: me.
All the folks who don’t mind paying a few more extra bucks a month, don’t let the rest of us stop you. You can start making those tax-deductible donations to the school corporation today.
