School board’s budget is enough

Taxpayers seem to sleep as school officials push the county commissioners to increase the property tax.

The schools have been more than fully funded for a number of years. The college built a facility in Elkton that they do not use to capacity. The public school Booth Street administration office is being renovated and the conference facility reportedly is simply luxurious. I went to Booth Street to pick up a copy of the proposed spending, but evidently the school administrators can plan for the apathy of county taxpayers; copies of the proposed budget were not readily available.

The Chesapeake City library has been closed for quite some time, and the county library system has been underfunded. At the courthouse, understand that judges in conference may be disrupted by the noise of people using microfiche readers in the property records department.

Yet the school superintendent told the Whig that increased funding for other departments is fine, as long as the proportion of funding going to the school system does not decrease; that is arrogance of greed beyond the pale.

A minimum 10 percent property tax increase seems likely. In mid-April, the Whig reported a shortfall of projected revenues from requested expenditures. The commissioners will not adjust the property tax rate from $0.96 to the constant yield equivalent of $0.87. Taxpayers must protest at the budget hearing on May 8; the spending has been out of control too long.

From: Gaylord Moody, Chesapeake City