Minutes - 20031023 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

Dana Thompson: Good evening, and thank you for your patience. My name is Dana Thompson. I have three children in the County district. Money is not the key issue tonight. The central issue is equity. And the mare we study the status quo, the grasser the inequity we find. Last week, new school information was released. And what captured the attention of the newspapers and residents in Chapel Hill was the number of City students who might attend a County school. But what has gone ignored and unreported are the nearly 3,500 students who live in or near poverty in our County. Where is the compassion, where is the equity, when the thought of affluent City students someday attending County schools raises a fiercer outcry than the state of want and neglect that 3,500 of our students live in every day, right now? These children are not invisible. The numbers are right here in front of us - if you can't see them, it's because you choose to ignore them. The inequity is not just in the economic segregation between the two school districts, but also in how our two systems are funded. Chapel Hill's outcry is that bigger is not better. Really? The bigger City district with the bigger growth rate comes away with a bigger and bigger chunk of the budget pie every year. And to paraphrase Dr. Seuss, it appears that Chapel Hill is "figgerin' on biggerin' and biggerin"' far years to come. Seventeen thousand is too many far a merged school district? Well, that's the number that the City district will be approaching years from now anyway. And who will pay for all this biggerin'? Why, the County residents will pay for the new schools in the City district, although we will never be allowed to use them. One hundred million is what the City district is asking for, and it's also asking for County residents to foot the bill through bands. This inequity permeates our community. We've been told recently that Chapel Hill is aself-contained, self-reliant community. Funny thing, though, is that the City depends an its rural neighbors far its most precious natural resource -water. You can't grow and you can't thrive without it. OWASA has seized thousands of acres in rural Orange to create Cane Creek reservoir. Property owners have lost their land or their right to use their land, millions of dollars of property have been lost from the County tax base, and residents in the area cannot even draw water from this source. Rural residents are charged with protecting the watershed for their City neighbors. The inequity is clear: the County bears the cast while the City receives the benefits. In the late 80's, the County oversaw a groundbreaking study that destroyed many misconceptions. And I'm not talking about the merger study of '86. I'm talking about the tax equity study of '89. In that year, the Towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro and Orange County funded a study that was performed by UNC's Institute of Government. It found that rural residents subsidize City residents. That's right. For every $1.00 that a rural resident pays in taxes they receive only 86 cents back in services. But for every $1.00 that a resident in Chapel Hill pays, they receive $1.10 in County services. The time has come for neighborliness to be a two-way street. If we're going to share the bill, we've got to be invited to the banquet. And I say this Thanksgiving, let's break with tradition, and let the children be at the head of the line. Let's fix the inequities in our County, and let's start with the schools.