Agenda - 02-12-2004-6 - Laserfiche WebLink

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achieve that goal. 5o what I'm going to ask the Board to do tonight, to consider, is this proposal here. (He distributed the proposal to the County Commissioners and staff and offered it to the public). It's clear to me that there is common ground on some things that we've addressed in this context of merger, in this discussion of merger and equal funding. The one thing that there's clear common ground on, and I coined that phrase from one of the members of the audience here tonight, the common ground that everybody was encouraging us to find on this issue of equal funding and merger. But that common ground is associated with the fact that everybody agrees that the school systems are unequally funded and the funding scenario is inequitable between the two, and that we need to address providing additional funds for the County school system children immediately. We need to fix that, and we have it within our power to fix that immediately, The other thing that I've heard people say is that they think that this issue is too important for Commissioners alone to be deciding, that they want the public to decide it. And although I've come a long way too since we've discussed this, I really wanted the Commissioners to decide the issue of merger and moving in the direction of merger, but it's clear to me after discussion on the 11th and after the discussion tonight, that this Board is not ready to make that decision, and I respect this Board's decision on that, and this Board's position on that. In view of the fact that this Board is not ready, it may be at some future date, it may be. I think it's incumbent upon us to begin now to provide a clear direction for the public on where we ought to go, and I think the public, to some extent, is ahead of us on this. At least that's what I'm sensing, And although it makes me nervous to put this proposal forward because we may still end up with two school systems if the public decides to go that route, I don't think the public will decide to go that route, because I think the public has come along far enough now to recognize that it is going to be in all of our best interests to have a merged school system sooner rather than later. Consequently, I'm asking this Board to consider putting a referendum forward in the primaries in May of next year to ask the public to vote on adopting a countywide supplemental school tax, or voting on merging the two school systems. What that means is that the status quo is unacceptable because that's what the people have told us, the status quo is unacceptable, and that many people would prefer to have the public decide this issue rather than the County Commissioners In any event, it will provide some additional funds for the County school system immediately, beginning next year hopefully. And it would also indicate whether there was enough public support for merger for us to move forward with that. And I recognize that if the public chose merger in the vote next May, or whenever the primary is held, it's not necessarily a binding decision for the Commissioners. But I think that if the public chose it, this Board would be required, which we would require ourselves, we would decide in advance that we are going to pursue implementation of that public non - binding decision. And, as you can see from the proposal that I've put forward, I had hoped that we could make the decision to move forward to merge the systems by July 2006. But in view of the fact that we are not going to make the decision tonight or in February, then I think the July of 2007 timeframe would be the only one that would be meaningful in this context if the public decided that we should merge the systems. I'm asking the Board to consider this option of giving the public the option of deciding to adopt a countywide supplemental tax, or merge the systems. Now that's not inconsistent with the collaboration discussion we just had because if the public decides that they want a countywide supplemental tax rather than to merge the systems, we will need that collaboration. We will need the benefit of all the decisions that result from that process. And if that process concludes itself