Orange County NC Website
Browse       Search
husbands and wives, and we are going to react, if we feel like we're being unfairly <br />treated. So please understand that. We want to love each other, we want to take care <br />of our neighbors, and we care about everybody in the County, but I'm really concerned <br />about the political issues that are arising right now and I don't want that to happen to <br />this community. <br />Andy Seligman: When I was in school, we went on a field trip and we saw how a canal <br />was operated. And so there was a barge that came along and there a loch, and the <br />loch helped to equalize levels along the canal. So the barge came along and the loch <br />operator let water into the lower portion, and the barge rose, then they opened the loch <br />door and it continued on its voyage upstream. What they did not do was open up the <br />loch door before water had been put into the system and the barge had risen. Now it's <br />obvious that if you did that there would have been a tumultuous, violent equalization of <br />levels and the water would have just sloshed out of the top. That would have been <br />destructive up there, and it would have also been destructive down on the bottom. You <br />don't just pour water from one system into another. You don't just open the doors. <br />Same thing with air locks, you don't just open the door. So I think we have something of <br />a comparable system. A lot of the resistance I'm hearing has to do with the fact that we <br />right now have this big difference of funding, and I haven't heard anybody in this room <br />support that. Now I hear people from Orange County saying that they want the funding <br />that they've requested for their kids. And I hear the people from Chapel Hill saying, <br />"Yes, this is outrageous and that system needs to be properly funded as well." But <br />think that that ought to precede an effective merger, because otherwise, there is going <br />to be this great sucking sound of resources from one place to the other. You know, <br />we'll just look and say, "Hey look, this library has got lots of books, this doesn't. We're <br />going to move printers; we're going to move teachers." If we merge the systems <br />equitably, it would require that we immediately devote all resources to Orange County. <br />How could it not be so? You've got to put them where they're most needed, and that <br />would be to the detriment of the existing schools in Chapel Hill. So I'd say we need to <br />come up with a funding mechanism and properly fund Orange County. That's a <br />prerequisite to the merger; it shouldn't be the result of it. Once that was done, I can see <br />potential advantages to merging. You know, year round schools, different paths, that's <br />all very intriguing. But we've got to solve the funding issue first, not look to the merger <br />as a way of accomplishing that goal. Thank you. <br />Harold McFarland: I'm Harold McFarland; I'm a parent of two kids in the Chapel Hill- <br />Carrboro school system. And I've heard a number of things tonight that I just can't wrap <br />my mind around in relation to other things that I've heard about this. One is an <br />assertion that we'd get better use of facilities, but it won't necessarily result in more <br />bussing. I don't see how that's possible. Some of the financial projections don't take <br />into account the fact that taxes would inevitably shift to the north as a result of property <br />values going up there as they are higher in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district. It <br />may be that they go down here, I doubt it. It also bothers me that the figures seem to <br />disingenuously assume that property values will continue to increase much faster than <br />the actual cost of providing education so that ten years out you can rely on the growth <br />and property values to keep the tax rate down. Well, if property value is going up, in all <br />