The Ozark Board of Education, like other school districts and taxing entities around the county, meets this month to set the tax levy for next year. I spoke last year against a pattern practiced for some time, a pattern of keeping money rightfully owed the taxpayers.
I remain opposed this year to that same pattern, that same maneuvering of taxpayer money between fund accounts. As I explained last year when the District’s revenue was going to be a so-called “windfall”, with an increase of over 5% in funding from the community, the Hancock Amendment in the Missouri Constitution specifically required us to lower our levy in order to return some of that “windfall” of money to the taxpayers. The Hancock Amendment was passed specifically to help our community members during times of rising property taxes and tighter economic funds. The explicitly written intent of that very clear Constitutional Amendment was to help taxpayers get to keep more of their own money by paying less in taxes.
It has long been the pattern of many school districts and their financial advisors across the state to circumvent that requirement by shifting money around to different fund accounts in successive years, a trick which is not technically illegal but, in my view, is certainly unethical and in violation of the plain intent of that law.
To be clear, I fully support giving our students and teachers and schools every ounce of support we can muster. I wholeheartedly agree with a quote often attributed to Jefferson explaining, “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” Educating our kids is one of, if not the, most vitally important responsibilities of parents and families – and those parents and families have hired a group of us, called a school district, to become equipped to do that for them, under their direction and at their sometimes-painful expense. Doing so openly, transparently, if you will, and with accountability to those parents and that community then becomes one of, if not the, most vitally important requirements for our school District. Shifting money between funds by alternately raising and lowering the different levies rather than returning it to the taxpayer is accountable to neither the law passed by those representing the community we are to represent nor, therefore, the community.
I plan to explain this at this month’s tax levy hearing, and I am going to ask that the reason for my no vote be recorded in the minutes of that meeting as follows:
This maneuvering of money between funds, called “creative financing” by more than one local official, is simply not something which, in good conscience, I can support. I voted against the first part of the maneuver last year, when the tax levy for operating expenses was lowered while the levy for the debt service fund was raised, with the result that the total levy remained static — rather than it being lowered as required by law. I must sadly vote against the second part of the maneuver this year, when the reverse is done in order to restore the money that was ratholed last year rather than returned to the taxpayers as was rightfully due them.
*As always, I speak only for myself and do not intend to represent the Board to you in any way in what I say or write.
I do, however, fully and firmly intend to represent YOU to the Board!