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

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breakdown is between the two systems. But obviously when the Chapel Hill - Carrboro system had 10,000 - 11,000 students to the Orange County system who has 7,000, then proportionally on a per pupil basis, of course, the Chapel Hill system receives more money of every dollar than you can credit to the Orange County system. We can certainly and will be glad to come back with, I guess, more detail charting of examples of how a countywide district tax would work.. We'd be glad to do that. We'd be glad to research, along with the attorney, how Moses' proposal would work from a legal perspective. I don't know whether that would take special legislation to pursue, or if it's something that is provided for right now in terms of the election process. Rod Visser: Just very briefly, and I think John's got the right idea, we can bring back a table that would show for various levels of a supplemental tax countywide, how much of that would go to Chapel Hill - Carrboro, and how much of that would go to Orange County. But it's basically a 62 -38 split thereabouts based on the different student populations. Commissioner Brown: So, if you did this, as Commissioner Gordon suggests, you'd give a fairly whopping sum also to the Chapel Hill- Carrboro system. Rod Visser: Right now we're just under $1 million per penny that comes on the tax rate. So, for four cents, let's say it's $4 million that would come from that. Sixty -two percent of that, which is $2.5 million, would go to the Chapel Hill- Carrboro system and $1.5 million to the Orange County system, if my math is right there. Commissioner Brown: I feel like we need to be very scrupulous when we speak of addressing the Orange County financial issues, and also saying that we are in this dilemma of funding on a per pupil basis, and that would also give Chapel Hill - Carrboro schools an extra $2..5 million that they have not expressed any need for. I think that needs to be really clearly always shown in both ways. Commissioner Carey: Can I comment on thatjust for a point of clarification? Commissioner Brown: You talk about maintaining and increasing funds for the Chapel Hill- Carrboro system. Commissioner Carey: Well, I think that as a point of fact, this Board has not held either one of the school systems' budget stable in any year that I've been on this Board in the last 19 years, and I think that regardless of what we do, whether we merge them or whether we implement a countywide district tax, the funding for both systems, whether it's one or two systems, is going to continue to go up because that's our culture, that's what we do. We've got two excellent school systems, so it's going to continue to go up. And I expect that it will. We still have the authority to decide how much it goes up. In either one of the scenarios that I put forward with respect to a countywide supplemental tax, my vision is that if we implement a countywide supplemental tax, the Chapel Hill- Carrboro school district tax would start to go down. It's our decision on how fast we phase it out. But I know that there are some people who think that it should never be phased out, even if we adopt a countywide supplemental tax. But we'll have to deal with that.. If we merge the systems, we won't have to worry about these different taxes, we'll only have one tax, one tax to levy. I would prefer that, because that means that we would levy one tax and phase out the Chapel Hill- Carrboro district tax over the term of years. In this scenario, it would be between now and 2007., So I think that we're going to give the Chapel Hill- Carrboro system more money regardless of what we do, and I think we ought to just recognize that fact. Commissioner Haikiotis: Well, a couple of observations. On the surface, I think once again Commissioner Carey has put forth an interesting proposal. You as