SCHSTooBigBlog Friday, August 30, 2013 JOLLY GOOD SHOW! Or – “Who are you and what have you done with our School Board?” Someone got the memo after Tuesday evening’s “public forum dress rehearsal”. Scott County was well represented by its School Board at last night’s public forum, and particularly by its Chair and forum moderator, Roger Ward. In the absence of ANY tax hike opposition at last night’s meeting, SCHSTooBig gives its reluctant, conditional endorsement to the $.09 tax hike. If the next forum (scheduled for September 19th, 6:30pm at ECS) even remotely resembles last night’s meeting, the Board will proceed with the hike. That’s $90 a year for every $100,000 dollars of real estate you own. As we understand it, the school district will begin collecting the new tax 45 days later unless a petition for recall is filed. If a petition is filed, the increase will have to wait for a ratification vote to be held at the next general election in May. Yes, we may finally begin construction of a second high school within a year or so. So why aren’t we celebrating? - “There’s no pleasing you SCHSTooBig people!” - It’s an understandable criticism, but not a fair one. We now have a copy of the District Facility Plan that was filed with the State all those years ago that promised us a second high school. It’s in black and white folks! Official black and white! And then along comes John Cooper and company and we are robbed. We should already have a second high school and we should have had it without raising taxes. It was promised us and we can now prove it officially. Our School Board simply chose not to honor their promise and then hoped we would forget. Yes, our Board finally conducted a professional meeting last night, but one good meeting does not a good School Board make. “Just get over it SCHSTooBig, we need to look forward, not backward”. Oh ye useful pawns. Nothing has changed with those running this school board, regardless of last night’s improved meeting. And it was all right there (or more correctly, not there) in the Board’s pretty little forum “brochure”. There’s a reason why courts insist you not only tell the truth, but also demand the “whole truth”. While wary now to avoid outright lies in their publication, this time the deceit is in omission. The “brochure” avoids completely any mention whatsoever of the “pot of money” from which facility construction is funded. The reason for the public forum was to discuss the construction of a new high school, yet no mention in their brochure of the monies that fund it? UNBELIEVABLE!! Especially considering the Board just three weeks ago sat through an hour and a half presentation all about this pot of money! A video of the presentation is available. Called the Capital Fund, or Facility or Construction Fund, the take away from the presentation put on by KDE’s Tim Lucas (Architect with the State’s Facility’s Branch) was that while Scott County might not have much money in this fund, it certainly should have. Don’t want to mention that! Instead the Board fills space in the brochure with pages about the only other fund they have, the “General” fund. The General Fund is certainly worthy of discussion, just not this discussion. So why avoid discussion of what we were there to discuss? Why spend so much colorful ink on General Fund pie charts instead of Capital Fund revenue streams. Slight of hand folks, pure and simple. While you’re looking at the pretty General Fund pie charts in one hand, you won’t notice what the other hand is up to. Mr. Lucas explained that Scott County Schools are blessed to be among a handful of schools, including Boone, Shelby and Spencer Counties, that the State characterizes as “robust districts”. Translation? Robust districts are those that have it going on, districts envied by the non-robust districts around the Commonwealth. Mr. Lucas spent considerable time explaining that Scott County has an enviable annual Facilities Revenue Stream that funds our Capital Fund like few others. He explained that each and every year over 8 million dollars flow into this account and it is this revenue stream that determines the district’s bonding capacity of $100 million. No, that is not a typo, $100 million. Last night’s discussion should have had us learning about the prior projects that have exhausted this $100 million bonding capacity and why our remaining bonding potential is so low. But no, we are fed a irrelevant discussion of where the money comes from which the district buys toilet paper. The brochure can be found at scott.kyschools.us if you haven’t one of the 5000 or so hard copies the district distributed in the days leading up to the forum. Besides the omission, the brochure also mis-leads. While page 8’s tax rate table seeks your sympathy that our real estate taxes are lower than most of our neighbors, it never mentions that Scott collects a 10 cent growth tax from its citizenry that those other districts don’t, making the rate in the table effectively 60 cents and our ranking much higher. Shame! We could go on and on, but the bottom line is this. To salvage our high schoolers, we are going to have to look forward and raise taxes. But this latest little deception has galvanized our resolve here at SCHSTooBig. We will not ignore the past! We know our newest Board members are between a rock and a hard place and we know they truly want to right our ship, but we beg they distance themselves from this latest slight of hand. They don’t own any of this, yet.
Posted on: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 12:23:07 +0000
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