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We would love to see that statistic have only one entry -Orange County number one. We need to vote on this merger -merger is the only solution to providing equal educational opportunity in our County. A referendum on addressing merger or a district tax will fail and dooms any chance of resolving this imbalance and will put us right back where we are now. I wonder what would happen if the segregation issue in the 60's were put up for referendum. It wasn't and the right thing was done. Let's take a bold and courageous step now and avoid having to do this all over again in a year or so, and merge now. John Hartwell: Fifteen years ago the County Commissioners appointed a task force to advise us on school funding. The report was introduced by Watts Hill, Jr., who spoke very simply. I quote, "We have to get the money where the money is and spend it where the children are. This is not an expression of philosophy, but a simple statement of fact." Children are spread all over the County. The tax base, however, is disproportionately located in the southern municipalities. It therefore follows that taxes raised in the towns have to be expended across the County as a whole. It frankly seems good to me that our businesses are concentrated in one area, because it allows us to preserve some open countryside. Sensible planning and zoning policies will continue this pattern, I trust. But if we do not spread the benefits of the commercial tax base into all corridors, then we forfeit the right to create differential land use policies. We may not say to one area, "You must remain rural," and then say, "Too bad you can't afford mare in your schools." Those who oppose merger most vehemently do so out of fear. You've heard much from fear this evening, and indeed America is very much in its grip today. Witness our foreign policy, which is similar, trapped by the peculiarly consuming fear of the elite and privileged. How many white school boards passed resolutions in favor of separate but equal systems in the 1950's? I wish I could say to you that more education will cure this, but it will not. Broader education is needed. Let me give an example. Partisans of the City school system often, and likely, site the special district tax as a symbol of the priority this area has historically placed on education. But the implication that this district is somehow unique in sacrificing for public education is erroneous. Any serious talk about deep interests in education and willingness to sacrifice for it should emphasize Rosenwald schools. Orange County had four Rosenwald schools built by rural black people in the 1920's on a matching funds program. Theirs was a nearly cashless society. They grew their own food, sewed their own clothes. A person could go for months without so much as seeing a dollar bill. Yet somehow they raised the money and built these schools. One of which was located within the present boundaries of the City school district. Why don't we talk about it? I say it is because the leaders of the City schools themselves do not know. Their own education was too narrow. And we perpetuate this constricted view, graduating our children and sending them on to a university, and pretending that it is excellence. At this rate, we may soon elect a President who can't find Latvia an a map. In the Buddhist tradition, enlightenment is said to arise when love and knowledge come together. I ask you to proceed in an enlightened spirit, not out of fear, but out of a consideration of what can be passible for the children of this County. Please equalize the funding and stir up the entrenched structures so as to let in some air.