John Harris Wrote: >I am not against public schools, i am a product of them and think >the best of >them. I think the school districts confuse what they >would like with what >they need though. Until they figure that out I >believe those paying the >bills (the taxpayers) will be skeptical to >requests for more money.
As Ann pointed out there are a lot of variables that effect how much school districts have to pay to educate our kids. The flucutation in oil prices has a huge effect on the energy costs the districts have each year. Inflation, mandates, the price of butter, whatever. These variables do not remain static. But as far as funding, School Districts get the majority of their funding based on the number of kids that walk through their doors each year. So John, District officials are not the ones you need to talk to about that. If you want to reduce the number of children in the district you need to talk to adults in the district about better use of birth control. The more kids there are to educate and the more needs they have (poverty, english as a sencond language, mental illness, physical disabilities,behavioral problems) the more it is going to cost to educate them. And the point I was trying to make about TIF (which Chuck misunderstood) was that if the city take chunks of property out of the commercial tax base and doesn't let it be part of the tax base (for the school district and county), they create an imbalance. The rest of the city continues to grow as Erik explained (more jobs, more people, more kids) which means more demand for services from schools and counties and more taxes. But the new commercial development that came in under TIF doesn't pay the new taxes caused by all this new demand. All these new taxes fall on the existing businesses and the residential home owners in the district. The long range effect is that our property taxes go up dramatically to give big business HUGE subsidies each year. Kinda stinks if you ask me. Ren�e Jenson Como _____________________________________________ To Join: St. Paul Issues Forum Rules Discussion Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
