Just a quick clarification to the budget mess story: While the city is raising the tax rate by 2.7 percent, it is doing so because the Board of Education agreed to free up $800,000 to cover some items the city is no longer going to have to pay for. This shift of expenses, according to sources, means taxpayers will have a net-zero tax increase between both the general government and education budgets in next fiscal year, which was the goal of the city council [many of us thought the goal was for the council to have a zero percent tax increase, because the school board basically does what it wants].
This "freed up" money was money the school board has been putting into reserves, money from the bonding of construction at Concord High School, which has long been paid for. The BOE has been hoarding this money for future capital expenditures. But the money should be returned to the taxpayers after the project is completed and paid for. This is why the public needs to be able to vote on these capital projects - so there is an eventual end date to the payment of these projects.
This "freed up" money was money the school board has been putting into reserves, money from the bonding of construction at Concord High School, which has long been paid for. The BOE has been hoarding this money for future capital expenditures. But the money should be returned to the taxpayers after the project is completed and paid for. This is why the public needs to be able to vote on these capital projects - so there is an eventual end date to the payment of these projects.
1 comment:
I am personally hoping that they start the consolidation, pretty soon. It has been talked for, way too long.
I think the school system, is flawed, but how much of that has to do with Federal Mandates, that get no funding. If I was a lawyer, like Russell, I would start a fight against the government and demand that Concord gets it's share of the money, last time I calculated it was over $4 million, that we were owed, where is the fight for that. $4 million is a lot of money, that is left on the table.
I also think that we should look into a fairer way to fund our children into school, something like each student gets only $5k, anything abover that the parents have to pick up the slack.
That is another point, do you know why it costs so much more money to educate the youth, because the parents are failing at their jobs.
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