Another hard sell

The Big Stink referred to this stat the other day in post on the slew of referendums on the ballot this fall and it just blew my mind. One school district in four in this state is going to the voters looking for more money and they are pushing it hard.

Across the metro, education officials are sounding those and other dire alarms
to voters who will be asked this fall to give schools more money in the form of
higher taxes.

When ISD 719 (Prior Lake/Savage) announced their twin referendums many voters and taxpayers said "did they learn nothing from the last election? Apparently the answer to that question was "NO".

Whatever the justification, for many school districts this year represents a
perfect financial storm. Many districts tried to win property tax increases last
fall, but about 60 percent of those measures failed. Some of the same factors
blamed for that showing remain in 2007. Although surveys conducted by education
officials show positive feelings toward schools, fears about increased property
taxes in a time of economic uncertainty inspire many voters to say "No," school
leaders said.

It is a perfect storm that all taxing units need to be painfully aware of. Cities, counties and school districts across the state are talking tax increases. All of them talk about their piece of the pie as if it was the only part of the tax burden. For example, I ran into one of our City Councilmen while walking out of our neighborhood Cub Foods a couple of weeks back. He commented on a letter to the editor I had in our local paper about the planned city tax increases. The first words out of his mouth (in attempting to justify the increase was ) "Well our city taxes are less than any of the other cities in our county!" My response (as was the response of another neighbor lady who joined our conversation) was "well when you add your 3 percent to the counties 9 percent to the school districts 12 percent....." All of a sudden a quarter of our annual income goes to pay local level taxes!

The cities, counties and school districts seem to think that the taxpayers are endless sources of money to support their wasteful spending habits. The first thought that crosses most of the minds of these city, county and school boards - when faced with budget shortfalls is to raise taxes! Oh to be sure, they will eventually talk about cuttings "costs" but only after the citizens have screamed in reaction to the latest tax increase and only to prove that there is nothing left to cut.

I do support both referendum requests. The budget-cutting effort this spring
highlighted how tight, and how little waste, is in the current budget.

If there was ever any reason needed to show the importance of city and county wide elections it is this one. The cuts that were "proposed" last spring were cuts to educational programs that have minimal impact on the school district budget but have maximum impact on parents. The hope is that these parents will then think "we can't vote against this - they'll cut more programs". The school board holds you children hostage to their greed!

So the next time that they tell you it is "for the children" you will know what they really mean.