OUR VIEW: Metcalfe board must focus on the future

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August 9, 2009

Staff report The Glasgow Daily Times Sun Aug 09, 2009, 08:50 AM CDT

GLASGOW — We elect leaders to make decisions that govern us. Sometimes they are tough decisions with long-term implications.

But some boards have been populated with members who through the years have taken the path of least resistance when it comes to decisions for generating revenue, otherwise known as raising taxes or fees.

Metcalfe County is in a crisis situation when it comes to school facilities. Four of the five schools in the district are in need of major renovation or replacement.

Superintendent Patricia Hurt’s plan is to replace two elementaries — North Metcalfe and Summer Shade — with one new elementary school that will work in conjunction with a new Edmonton Elementary to house all of the kindergarten through sixth-grade students in the county. In total, she wants to build two new elementary schools.

There’s one major hurdle to the otherwise good plan. There is not enough money available for the Metcalfe County School District to carry out the plan.

The district is still paying for a new high school built 15 years ago. That bond will not be closed for another five years. There’s $2 million available now, but one new school could cost as much as $10 million to build.

A recent report in the monthly Kentucky State Board Association magazine cited Mark Ryles, head of the facilities division in the state education department, who said there are often one or more of three reasons districts are unable to pay for their facility needs — lack of funds, poor planning or lax preventive maintenance.

The first two certainly apply in Metcalfe County.

For 17 years, from 1991 to 2008, school board members voted to take the compensating tax rate — flat-lining revenue year-over-year — instead of raising revenue each year through rate of inflation increases in order to put aside enough money to pay for school renovations and replacements.

The tax rate was raised from 30.2 cents per $100 valuation in 1990 to 41.6 cents per $100 in 1991, or from $302 on a $100 thousand home to $416. From 1991 to 2004, by taking the compensating rate that flat-lined revenue year-over-year, district officials allowed the tax rate to drift downward to 36.8 cents. How did the district maintain revenue with a declining tax rate? Presumably with population and industry growth within the county, but that boom never made its way to school coffers.

If district officials had maintained tax rate integrity through the county’s growth decade, with modest increases, it could have put together a building fund that would have allowed flexibility now. Instead, district officials are faced with trying to persuade county residents, during lean economic times, that significant tax hikes will be necessary in order to meet facility needs.

And they can’t wait to see if the state will ride to the rescue with construction money because the state has sent the message it will help those districts that are willing to help themselves by taking the 4 percent revenue increase, and by possibly putting the recallable nickel tax on the table.

As leaders of Metcalfe County School Board, among others statewide, have stewardship obligations that cause them to face the tough issues and unpopular decisions head on, they must recognize there are ongoing needs to be met and few, if any, are more important than educating future generations.

It may be helpful for board members to ask themselves, “Where will this decision, or lack of decision, put our district in 10 years? In 25 years? In 50 years?”

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