Frank talk

By Doug Page | Friday, May 2, 2008, 09:55 AM

Hats off to Trotwood officials.

They are willing to talk about “the problem whose name cannot be said.” And talk about it in front of voters.

Municipal and school leaders have long whispered to each other about the issue. Localities depend on property taxes, income taxes and state funding to keep their government running. Schools tap the same sources.

The unwritten agreement throughout the state had been cities relied on minimal property taxes and got the bulk of their bucks from income tax.

The school district would depend on property taxes for its local funding. An income tax was to be left to the cities for the most part.

Then the Supreme Court stuck its nose under the tent, declaring four times the state’s method of funding public education unconstitutional. Rather than fix the system, the Legislature chose to tinker with funding formulas. The result was school districts never knew one year to the next how much they would get from the state.

Then the economy went south.

Talk in Columbus turned to cutting the Local Government Fund upon which cities, townships and counties depend. Then ways were found to siphon funds from education. Then cities started to see their income tax revenues level off or decline. School districts saw property values decline and the tax delinquency rate increase.

“The state of Ohio giveth and the state of Ohio taketh away,” Lowell Draffen, Trotwood-Madison superintendent, said last week at a joint meeting of the City Council and the school board.

“We face the same kind of issue the city has,” he said.

The school district is planning a new levy on the November ballot that would raise $2.6 million annually. The board is in the midst of cutting $1 million from this year’s budget and $1 million from next year’s.

That will just about cover a projected 2011 deficit.

That’s the same year the city is expecting a shortfall. It will be asking voters to renew two street levies in November, one for 1 mill, the other 0.74 mills.

“We’ve been streamlining our budget since 2002,” said Mike Lucking, city manager. “Any further cuts and we’re starting to amputate our organization.”

Things are tough all over. The schools need money. The city needs money. I could use some, too.

I’m sure there are more folks in worse shape.

“Both of our houses are in financial trouble,” councilman Rap Hankins said. “Our citizens are in financial trouble.”

No one argued with that.

One retired citizen did ask Draffen what the heck he expected voters to do in November.

The retiree said he was voting his pocketbook and would vote against any tax … from anybody.

There it was, out in the open.

Better there than restricted to the corner table of the coffee shop, the back pew of the church, or the toxic anonymity of an Internet message board.

Out in the open, voters and officials can begin to discuss how to weather this storm. That the city and the school district are both on the November ballot is a distress flare in the night.

The city, school district and residents are best served by the frank discussions.

For the city, school district and residents to succeed will require cooperation and a buy-in to the concept of paying forward.

We all sit in the shade of trees we did not plant.

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