6/23/08 Meeting at Frontier HS for Mil Levy campaign 55 megs. (Please download large audio files to your computer for listening.)Web site under development for Mil Levy campaign: http://esdmlevy.org/
The leader of the meeting was Paul Dellacroce, C-1 Superintendent.
A few thoughts stuck in my mind while the presentation portion of the meeting was underway. Efforts discussed at this meeting were mostly directed to marketing the mil levy to voters, not promising anything, just marketing.
In the C1 district, the proportion of total mil levies specifically for school related purposes was presented as substantially lower than the comparable ratio in surrounding districts. To make further sense of this statistic, however, the value of actual dollars per student received from all sources must be determined before we can know if the funding level for students in the C1 district is actually lower. Voters should be informed of how their local school district compares in real revenue dollars per student with surrounding districts, in order to determine whether the requested mil levy increase is reasonable.
There was some discussion about budget-balancing alternatives the district might do if additional tax revenue is not approved. Cautions were expressed that discussing these measures would constitute negative campaigning, and negative campaigning should be avoided. If these alternatives exist, they should be presented to voters to further inform their mil levy decisions.
Lastly, it seemed apparent at the meeting that C1 wishes to retain spending discretion over any increased funding, and that forthcoming ballot language might not specifically direct future spending. Instead, the indication was that ballot language would be more general so as to “not tie the districts hands” in order to allow future C1 board policy directives to control how the new revenue is spent. For me, this is a deal-breaker. Government entities should never be given blank checks, or even quasi-blank checks.
In sum, I’d like to see: 1) real revenue levels per student in all comparison districts, 2) cost savings cuts and service reallocations that would be necessary without a revenue increase, and 3) specific spending directives in the ballot language that would bind the district and provide financial accountability to voters.
One more thing, and this is more of a tangent. We are in an inflationary spiral. The reason oil prices went through the roof in the 1st and 2nd quarter is because the U.S. Dollar was seriously inflated over that same time frame. See the federal economic indicators . Businesses are adjusting to this complicated pricing challenge by converting costs that can be isolated to pass-through fees, and reducing the scope of their pricing to more narrowly defined value-added portions of the production cycle they provide. This might actually involve a price reduction for the core service or product.
For example, perhaps C1 could spin off the transportation element (busing) as a pass through fee and provide full transparency of that cost structure. In this case, the C1 board might consider a measure to repeal any bus mil levies and then convert school bus service to be entirely fee based. In addition to encapsulating a volatile and uncontrollable cost, this would have the benefit of coupling the service to the actual users of the service. If presented in conjunction with a mil levy increase for more direct educational purposes, the district could go to the voters with a balanced request that might be more attractive.