I, like everyone this year, am closely watching my budget, both professionally and personally. There are many items on our ballot up for Election by the public on the April 8th ballot, among those are school board members and various wards will be electing many new city council members. However, the item that is most important to me is the vote on the property tax increase for the public schools operating budget.
Financial constraints on the operating budget have compelled the school district to ask for a property tax increase. Basically they need to make up 10 million dollars. In order to do this they are asking for a property tax increase to raise 5 million for the operating budget in addition they are cutting 5 million from their current operating budget. That cut will happen even if voters do not pass the property tax increase. They have tried to cut from areas that will not directly impact the education of our children and I believe they have done a pretty good job at cutting in those areas.
However, if the property tax increase is NOT approved they will be forced to make further cuts which will affect staffing, directly teachers who teach our children, raise classroom sizes, it could affect transportation of students to a magnet school in the city and would likely affect the ability to hire good qualified teachers to our schools, among many many other items.
For a $200,000 home your taxes will increase less than $1.00 per month. So I urge those who will be voting in this election to vote for the property tax increase so that our school can continue to provide the fine education that has been a cornerstone of our schools.
You can get complete information on the cuts that WILL be made even it the tax is not approved as well as the complete list of those cuts that will be considered if the tax is not approved at:
http://www.columbia.k12.mo.us/
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