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like Wake County. However, we know that Orange County has not established a reputation that people like to pay higher taxes for education. Future new residents will choose to live in Cary, Apex, ar other cities instead of here far comparable education. At the same time, I think other Orange County residents may choose to leave to avoid a high tax. Secondly, I think the idea of a school merger is more like money problem rather than improved education. The topic of school merger started the concept of equalizing each student funding countywide. The factor is each student will receive equal amount of money from the County. Chapel Hill schools get more money because Chapel Hill residents pay a special district tax. So in order to fill this gap between the school systems, I think there are other solutions to explore. I oppose this merger also because both systems have developed their awn features that are different, but they are very good. I love this country because they respect and accept the differences. I request that the County Commissioners to allow Chapel Hill and Orange County schools keep their own differences. I am strongly against the merger. Thank you for your time. Nancy Belding: Thank you for letting me speak. As a parent of two Orange County students, I would like to speak tonight in favor of fair funding for Orange County schools. We have many resources in our system, including excellent and involved parents, but we do need funding far our schools that will offer our children appropriate educational opportunities. These are not things like learning to speak Hungarian. These are appropriate things that we need including a number of reading resource teachers, nurses, guidance counselors, and social workers. Foreign language teachers have already been mentioned. Adequate funding in the County system will always be difficult because of our decreased tax base, which was presented, tonight in the opening statements of why we do have problems. The areas of open land use protect the water resources for Orange County and the Chapel Hill community as well as the Carrboro community. The special district tax in Chapel Hill will always limit the amount per pupil that the Orange County students can receive without over funding Chapel Hill students. We already have some merging of resources in Orange County and Chapel Hill and Carrboro. The school building projects are typically paid for through countywide bonds. Over the next ten years, one projection I saw showed that the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system will need $99 million to fund new school buildings while Orange County will need $20 million. As a citizen of Orange County, our tax dollars, 8Q percent of those will go to fund Chapel Hill schools. Anticipation of change and unknown can be nerve wracking for all of us. But rather than dwell on unfounded worries such as long distance bussing, let us focus on the important issues and improving the quality of all the schools within the County and City schools. Thank you. Dianyou Hu: Good evening. I am strongly against the merger. May I ask if anybody is opposed to merger, would you please stand? I came here to speak on behalf of my family and my neighbors and my friends who cannot make it here tonight. While we live in Chapel Hill Chapel Hill is in Orange County, so we also consider us residents of Orange County. So we are proud of being in Orange County, we are proud of living in Chapel Hill. We consider that Orange County and the school system area two very different school systems -City system and County system. Each with its own academic programs to accommodate a quality education to all the students in the County. Did