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Commissioners set the Orange County per pupil funding at the level needed to make up the difference between the amount requested by the Chapel Hill schools and the amount raised by the Chapel Hill district tax. If this description is correct, then the procedure clearly is flawed. The per pupil funding level should be set to fully meet the needs of the Orange County schools and the district tax to be used only to provide any additional funding requested by the Chapel Hill schools. At the last public hearing, one speaker stated that a merger is necessary because the Orange County tax base cannot support a district tax. This simply is not true. Over the last ten years, the amount of tax base per student in the Orange County district has increased to the point where it nearly equals that of the Chapel Hill district. The issue is not tax base, but income. The median income of homeowners in the Chapel Hill district is 60% higher than that of the Orange County district. As a result, Chapel Hill residents can more easily afford the higher tax rate. This situation cannot be changed through a merger. Orange County district residents will remain challenged to afford higher taxes, but they will face a 25% increase in their taxes in order to generate the new money for their schools. I think it would be an injustice to saddle the Orange County residents with such a district tax increase while at the same time reducing their control over their schools. Another speaker at the last hearing stated that Chapel Hill students would be in the same situation under a merger that they are right now. I disagree. Under a merger, hundreds of students in the northern part of the Chapel Hill district will face a very different situation. Now they are part of a system of neighborhood schools. Under a merger, they will be part of a system that could bus them up to 12 miles from their home. Mast of these students live closer to several Chapel Hill schools than to any Orange County school. My family, for example, is closer to seven of the Chapel Hill elementary schools than we are to any Orange County school, yet we are likely to be moved. A speaker at the last meeting urged you to erase the invisible line running through the County by merging the two districts. I suggest that merging the two districts will not erase the line, but will just move it south to Homestead Road. Finally, I would like to take issue with Commissioner Corey's implication that we can't and do not need to know everything about apost-merger school system in order to determine that merger is a good idea. Even if we can't know what the effects of merger will be, we should at least try to determine what they are likely to be. For example, although we can't know how minority achievement will be affected by merger, we can analyze how mergers in other counties have affected minority achievement. If the analysis shows that minority achievement declined after mergers, it certainly would argue against a merger in Orange County. Without extensive study of the likely effects of a merger on issues such as minority achievement, the Commissioners may choose to support a merger, only to wind up hurting students. No one wants to see that outcome. I urge the Commissioners to put aside the merger proposal and work to improve our schools through other methods. Thank you. George Griffin: My name is George Griffin. I'm the parent of two children in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system. I, like many others, have attended the INFORM sponsored presentation on merger and last week's public hearing at Chapel Hill High School. I've read the articles in the paper, letters to the editors, and the emails flying around regarding merger. I am opposed to merger for many reasons, all of which have