RE: Ventura tax reform & Mpls. schools
As a school board member, resident of Minneapolis and mother of 2 school children, I have some concerns over this proposal. The tax change Ventura is proposing is a shallow tax and is subject much more to the whims of the economy. Property taxes tend to be more stable as housing stock is not as subject to great swings as sales and income tax. If the economy goes on a larger downturn, and it will (history bears this point out) then I fear public education will face massive shortfalls. In Minneapolis, we, as you all know, deal with many huge educational and social chanllenges not really experieinced by the more affluent areas. We are very fortunate to have strong community support for our schools. The extra money we raise helps us to some interventions such as reduced class size that really benefits students. With the political reality that the city no longer has the power base it once had at the legislature, the power base of the outer ring suburbs and affluent districts puts us at the mercy of policymakers who think Minneapolis and St. Paul are treated too well by the legislature. I fear that any opporutnity to reduce our ability to ask for community support of education and to become so very reliant on the state leaves me somewhat concerned. Also Ventura proposes a 2% cap on education spening this biennium. With the current utilities and fuels costs up siginificantly from this time last year, the school district is faced with utility bills that have doubled and fuel for transportation half again higher than what was projected. We are no different in that respect from every home and business owner who is facing the same dilemma. Yet we are to become, under Ventura's tax plan, much more dependent on the state. If he is serious about funding public education, then I would like to see more of an effort on the part of the Gov. to help school districts right now. There are programs to help low income families with heating costs, maybe right now we need to consider this for school districts on a short term, emergency basis. I don't see the state or the Federal govt. fully funding their many mandates now, so I feel uneasy at this point about a proposal that makes our schools more dependant on the state. Audrey Johnson 10th Ward & MPS BOE Director
RE: Ventura tax reform & Mpls. schools
Oops, meant to post that one under my own name...not the administrative List Manager designation. David Brauer King Field - Ward 10 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of List Manager Sent: Monday, January 08, 2001 1:17 PM To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Ventura tax reform & Mpls. schools Doug Grow had an informative column Sunday on Ventura's tax reform plan. Now as we all, ahem, know, purely state matters are not germane to Minneapolis-Issues. But Grow included a particularly Minneapolis aspect in his piece (which is at: http://www.startribune.com/viewers/qview/cgi/qview.cgi?story=83286723&templa te=column_grow_a), or go to columnists on the Strib's Metro-page site. Anyway, Grow wrote: "And, in perhaps his scariest 'reform' proposal, Ventura said that owners of businesses, farmland and vacation homes should not have to pay for excess school levies. That burden would fall totally on homeowners. Think of how a proposal such as that could gut excess-levy programs such as the one overwhelmingly passed by Minneapolis voters to maintain small class sizes. More than half of the $40 million levy comes from business and commercial property." As I recall, when we debated the referendum on the list last year, there was a subsection about state property-tax reform and how it pushed a greater share of the levy onto homeowners. If Grow is right, Ventura would lift the burden entirely -- presumably in exchange for the state picking up more education costs and reducing our property taxes. A levy cap sounds mighty dangerous to a city with most of the state's social problems, that has nevertheless been willing to surtax itself. >From the Minneapolis resident's perspective, levy-caps sound like the fatal flaw in Ventura's plan. Can list members on the school board, city government, or even on the state/governor side weigh in with their perspective? (And of course, the rest of us...) David Brauer Kingfield - Ward 10
