September 2, 2014 Tax Hearing & Board Meeting

As always, these are my opinions only and not the opinions of the Pendleton County School Board or any other individual board members.

 

The 2014 school tax rate meeting was one of the more baffling meetings of my term to date.  The minutes of the meeting will shed some light on the mechanics of the votes.  The thoughts and positions of board members are more difficult (or in some cases impossible) to understand.  I obtained a DVD of the proceedings attempting to make sense of it.  Mr. Strong made the recommendation to the Board for the “compensating” rate plus an additional 4% added to this rate for real estate and tangible property.  There was support for this position on the Board, but I disagreed.  I have written and discussed with voters at length in previous months about our district spending priorities (administration positions, vehicles, etc.) and their impact on our annual budget.  While our district could definitely use additional revenue, I have become convinced that these additional dollars will be subject to the same flawed outcome.  Our district budget problems are caused by spending, and these problems are many times larger than the $155,000 that this additional revenue would provide.  This tax rate motion (compensating +%4) failed 2-3.  Because of my support for additional programs in the last school year (pre-school program, new reading and math curriculum), I felt compelled to support a lower level of rate increase.  I made a motion for compensating +2%.  This motion was seconded, but also failed 2-3.  A third proposal was made for the compensating rate with no other increase.  This passed 5-0.  The real struggle will occur over the next 9 months as we address our spending priorities and attempt to “balance” our working budget.