skinney@keynoter.com
Monroe County School Board Chairman John Dick’s contingency plan to raise property taxes if a Jan. 31 referendum fails drew criticism from the School District’s Audit and Finance Committee at a Monday session.
Dick, as well as board members Andy Griffiths, Robin Smith-Martin and Ron Martin, and Superintendent Jesus Jara, were all on hand for the discussion.
Next month Keys voters will be asked to continue for four years a Legislature-approved mechanism that allows the district to transfer a half mill (50 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value) tax levy from a capital fund to a general operating account. Capital funds pay for future school construction and other hard costs. Operating funds pay for things like salaries, supplies, utilities and the like.
Keeping that half mill shift in operating accounts raises an estimated $9.8 million.
Dick said he wants board members to agree at a Dec. 13 meeting to raise the capital tax from a half mill to a full $1 per $1,000 of assessed home value.
Making that commitment at the Dec. 13 meeting puts in place a possible contingency plan – just in case the vote fails.
“We need to put to rest that people think they can get a tax decrease,” he said. “I’d request you’d stop that nonsense.”
“The message can get out,” Dick continued, “but I’ll tell you, it’s not going to happen. I will poll the board and ask them how would they vote come next September [when the 2012-13 budget is finalized] — if this millage fails.”
Audit Committee Chairman Stuart Kessler said the capital millage tax rate, “should be based on the capital needs of the district. Not because we’re transferring money around to make a political statement.”
Larry Murray, the audit committee member who requested the discussion item be placed on the agenda, expressed concern about how Dick’s board poll would be perceived by the voting public.
“It sounds like to me, and one interpretation that could be offered, is this: ‘Mr. Voters, if you vote down the half mill operating tax, we’re going to raise the half mill capital tax.’ The board, in effect, is going to say to the voters, ‘Screw us, we’ll screw you.’ And that’s well how it could be interpreted.
“I think it’s a very volatile political act,” Murray concluded.
Sloan Bashinsky, an activist and frequent candidate for various office, stressed that scrutiny of what happens if the referendum fails could damage the outcome at the polls.
“Everybody [here] knows there ain’t gonna be no change in taxes. Why you would keep floating this and trying to put it out in front of the public, about something so critical, is beyond my comprehension. I view it as reckless, irresponsible and just plain stupid.”
The School Board meets Tuesday, Dec. 13, beginning with a 3 p.m. workshop, at Coral Shores High School in Tavernier.———————————
Not reported by Sean Kinney, I also said this is a flea on an elephant, and after I had my say, Stuart Kessler said I could not speak in that way. I said this is the United States of America, he is a lawyer, I did not accuse anyone of a crime or immoral act; under the First Amendement I can speak how I wish to speak. Stuart said he would stop citizen comments if that continued. My magazine empty for the time being, I spoke “normal” after that.
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Now consider this contrary Coconut Telegraph comment I do not take lightly.
[School District .5 mil Tax] I never thought for a minute the school district portion of the property tax would decrease if the referendum fails. It should, but we’re not naive enough to believe that bit of baby Pablum. If the referendum fails, the school district just will pass a budget with a significant millage increase the following September — probably .5 mil and then some, depending on whatever rationale they can generate in the meantime. What we all really want to know is would the .5 mil tax really stop the problem? Is it enough to cover the inexcusable laxness of the past few years when they should have been addressing the falling revenue and budget issues? Give us a figure that they can defend, Deer school district! What is it that you really need to cure your ills? And what would the true and real picture become if you don’t get the tax? Why aren’t you being forthright? School districts all over this state, and all over the country have revamped their operations, streamlined and cut, and yes, there was bleeding to stop a hemorrhage further down the road because they saw the long road to recovery. You haven’t done that yet.
You’ve managed to side step the really tough choices since 2006-2007. Was that smart, do you think, or have you merely allowed the problem to compound to the point of catastrophe?
According to another poster, there are approximately 800 district employees who are not full-time teachers. Who are they and what do they do? Let’s see 4-5 administrative staff per school, one maintenance staff on duty, a couple of folks in the library, and 3-4 cafeteria workers times 9-10 schools (I may have missed one), that accounts for approx. 120 people who aren’t full time teachers. I think all of the 800 are not necessary. (Cutting the jobs of janitorial staff was absolutely a for-show sort of effort.) 70 employees and benefits savings.
On the cost of the private contract, did you really save a million dollars, or is that merely the salary and bennies figure? What was the real savings between the two? Was it substantially less than 1 million? Why did you stop there? By itself, the janitor staff cut took on the identity of a token gesture, which is exactly what it was, and you know it. If you’d kept at it and carved and carved all the way through the redundant and bloated staff and programs that are a burden on the budget you might have actually achieved something. Shame on the School District Board letting this go on and on.
I say tear down the internal structure of the school district and its processes, eliminate the b.s. programs, the filler employees, get back to basics. Education first then extras like sports, etc. Add them one by one when you can afford them. Rebuild a school district that is fully accountable, streamlined to meet the needs of our students’ education. If we have to let the school district fall flat on its face before they wake up and start being realistic then that’s what has to happen. The County faced it and many other school districts have faced it and done the hard work. Why don’t you get on with it? I am willing to support Keys’ schools through property taxes, but I am not willing to blindly support this charade of smoke and mirrors any longer. I will vote no on the referendum unless something truly significant comes out of the school district between now and then. They can’t ask for more money until they rebuild the system and get rid of the bloated staff.
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Looks to me this critic sees the referendum failing as necessary to force the school district to make cost cuts this critic feels already should have been made. Looks to me that also is Stuart Kessler, Larry Murray and Robin Smith-Martin’s agenda. They might make great politicians, if they were not already great politicians.
I usually can be reached at keysmyhome@hotmail.com, but today I’m doing triage in the children’s hosptial. And not just in the Keys. Consider this truly disturbing forward from Sancho Panza yesterday. In the early 1980s, I met and M.D. in Atlanta, who had written an article claiming AIDS was an American bio-engineered disease, developed as a weapon, which was first tested in Africa, then it managed to get loose.
ALL the Vaccines Are Contaminated – Every Last One of ThemS. Edmonson for Salem-News.com“The chief, if not the sole, cause of the monstrous increase in cancer has been vaccination” – Dr. Robert Bell, once Vice President International Society for Cancer Research at the British Cancer Hospital (WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Have you been rushing out to get a yearly flu vaccine or diligently taking your children for the 40 or so mandated childhood vaccines? That’s really a shame because you have unwittingly been trading a run-of-the-mill flu or just the measles, for loading up your or your children’s bodies with cancer and other deadly viruses, a destructive bacteria, a chemical selected to damage fertility, and with synthetic DNA that threatens to damage your own DNA – the biologic code for your existence. Who is saying the vaccines are contaminated? None other than the (now deceased) head of vaccines at Merck, Dr. Maurise Hillerman, who on camera admitted that Merck’s Hepatitis B vaccines, contaminated with a virus, caused the AIDS epidemic in the US. He went on to say that all of Merck’s vaccines are contaminated with cancer and other viruses. (The US government has conceded the HEB B vaccine causes Lupus. That vaccine is mandated for every infant in the US on the day of birth, and is associated with MS as well.) That vaccine is mandated for every infant in the US on the day of birth, and is associated with MS as well.) For Jews who have almost religiously believed in medical authorities about vaccines and poo-pooed those worried about the safety of vaccines, they might want to notice that Hillerman was Jewish. Or they might recognize that so is Dr. Larry Palevsky, a board certified NY pediatrician, who for ten years routinely gave vaccines to his patients until he noticed them losing eye contact and then began looking into the vaccines he had blindly trusted. He found that they are ALL contaminated with viruses that are so small they can never be removed. He no longer gives any vaccines. He now treats his young patients for autism and other neurologic injuries from vaccines.Donald W. Scott, the editor of The Journal of Degenerative Diseases and the co-founder of the Common Cause Medical Research Foundation, links vaccines to AIDS (as did Hillerman) and to US bio-weapons research, and says they are contaminated with mycoplasma, a primitive bacteria that takes apart cell walls. Perhaps the highest scientific authority saying vaccines are contaminated is Garth Nicolson. He is a cell biologist and editor of the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Metastasis, and the Journal of Cellular Biochemistry. He is one of the most cited scientists in the world, having published over 600 medical and scientific peer-reviewed papers, edited over 14 books, and served on the editorial boards of 28 medical and scientific journals. He is not just saying that vaccines are contaminated with mycoplasma but is warning the US that they are. Nicolson goes further and says that we are all being damaged by them and contracting chronic degenerative diseases that. That damage translates into lifelong patients (and thus life-long profit) for the pharmaceutical industry making the vaccines and he says doesn’t appear to be accidental. Read more here: http://www.salem-news.com/articles/november292011/vaccines-contaminated-se.php |
