Friday, November 27, 2009

Great piece in the Monitor this morning ...

Before I get back to work, I wanted to point out to readers that Chuck Douglas has a great column in the Monitor today about what came out of the Legislative commission studying the charter commission: ["One step closer to bringing our school charter home"].

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, it's like if I write a letter about my partner and then say what a great job he did.

Anonymous said...

Douglas does a good job explaining the importance of bringing the charter back to Concord citizens. What he doesn't say is that up until 1961 district voters were able to vote on the annual school district budget. Then the school board and the then Concord state reps decided to take that power away from citizens, by giving all power to the school board. Concord citizens should have some of that power back.

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's because of the State Taxation, or lack of it. If we were in another state and it schools were not paid directly by property taxes, would this be an issue no.
And the only reason why the legislation came up and there are opponents, is because the city of concord NEEDS to spend money. You didn't spend it when the buildings just needed a little updating each year.
Also, why don't you and the Concord Taxpayers Association, go after the unfunded mandates, so we can get cash back.

Tony said...

Anon12:04, hah, you're funny.

Anon4:42, you're right! And why are they so afraid of us having that right back? Virtually everyone in the state has the ability to do that. And we don't.

Anon8:30, we have a revenue problem and a spending problem on the state level. The state is a small part of this scheme.
In other states, local governments pay for school buildings. In Massachusetts, for example, there is state reimbursement of 30 to 40 percent. However, the rest is paid by the local property taxpayers. Mass. has a law called Proposition 2 1/2 which requires initiative petition votes on expenditures over 2.5 in operating budgets and building projects, which are called debt exclusions.
In other communities, similar processes occur on school building projects. It happens all over this state via vote or Town Meeting.
It should be noted that the SCHOOL SYSTEM didn't keep the buildings maintained. "You" or us, didn't have anything to do with it.
The school district is sitting on nearly $6 million, collected since the CHS bond was paid off. They could have started putting that money right into fixing the older schools.
The CTA doesn't deal with federal issues - only local issues.

Anonymous said...

Getting money back into Concord is a local issue, how much does the Federal Government owe Concord, millions, I would love to see that reflected in my property tax bill.

Jeremy said...

It could be possible that the state and the school board have a spending problem.
I send about 20% of my income to concord so I can rent my property from them (if I stop paying rent, they come force me off my property), another 20% in income taxes to Washington, and probably another several percent in various taxes. How much is enough?