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merged system. People of this County deserve a shot at voting in a less expensive option to improving funding to schools before a permanent merger is forged upon us. Thanks. Christopher Gelpi: Hi, I'm Chris Gelpi. I'm a professor of political science at Duke University and a father of two kids in the Chapel Hill schools. I want to make four paints tonight. The first is that I believe that this process is proceeding too quickly. According to the executive summary of the staff report, and I'm quoting, "Many important related educational programming -attendance zones, bus transportation, and other issues - would need to be examined carefully as part of a more formal analysis in merger plan or during the transition period leading up to the effective date of merger." And I don't see how that you can, in good conscience, plan or vote on, how you can vote on such a merger without having some kind of plan. We can't wait until the transitional period to make these kind of difficult decisions and tradeoffs. My second point is that there will be difficult decisions and tradeoffs. Again, according to the staff report, each school district has its different programmatic strengths. It's not the case that Chapel Hill schools fund everything better than Orange County schools. So even if funding were increased to Chapel Hill levels, same cuts would have to be made. We cannot have the best of both systems at the cost of the Chapel Hill system. My third point is that I understand the concern aver unequal funding between the systems and I'm sympathetic to this problem. But I believe that it's important to separate the issue of equal funding from the issue of merger. There are a variety of ways, some of which were presented earlier here this evening that we could bring funding into equality across the systems without merger. And some of these involve the referendum across the County that the presentation tonight noted that the County had never actually been asked whether they would pay those funds. In addition, your own report also says that there are ways to do this without a public referendum. Again, the General Assembly, as your reports notes, has previously approved legislation permitting the implementation of a countywide supplemental tax without a referendum. This seems to me disingenuous to justify a merger on the basis of unequal funding when these kinds of other options have not even been explored. Gther than the unequal funding problem, it seems to me that little reason has been put forward for the merger. My final point is that I think we need to have a vote. If those who are pro-merger can't persuade either the voters of Grange County or the General Assembly to equalize funding, how can they, or you, in good conscience, go forward with something like this? I understand the historical reasons behind the procedure that allows you to move ahead without a vote, but this is a misuse of this law. Enforcing a merger to equalize funding because that's what you can force through seems to me unfair, undemocratic, and potentially unwise. So we need a vote. Without a vote, what you are proposing is, for my tastes, too close to taxation without representation. Thank you. Eric Dumain: My name is Eric Dumain and I'm here tonight as an Grange County parent to ask you to begin the courageous, albeit unpopular process of merging the two school systems. As you mentioned before, the issue is about money and the funding inequities of the two school systems have been addressed by several speakers tonight. But it's also about improving community perceptions and making redistribution of