If you're in KCMO, today is election day. There are a couple of pretty important initiatives on the ballot, so make the time today, exercise your democratic right and freedom and give the city your opinion on the matters.
There are at least two major issues on the ballot. The first, is a renewal of a 1% sales tax increase. The renewal of the tax would provide needed funds to go to neighborhood deferred maintenance needs. I'm not a fan of the city using public funding to promote the tax, or some of the verbage used to influence/confuse/mislead voters. The "no new taxes" tag is very misleading in my opinion because there is a reason we vote for tax increases to run out - -it's so we don't have to pay them forever. So renewing a tax is a NEW TAX. It's not incremental to what we're paying now, but it's a NEW TAX.
Anyway, in spite of this, I'm voting for the measure because frankly, it's worth the extra money to me for us to have this money to take care of 30 years of deferred maintenance costs. And I prefer a sales tax to raising my property taxes again because a) at least a certain percentage of a sales tax is elective for me to pay and b) people outside the city will also pay this tax every time they pay for tickets to a Garth Brooks Concert, have dinner at the Power and Light District or go on a Plaza shopping spree. So at least some of the costs will be taken on by others.
The second initiative has been a huge struggle for me. This ballot measure is an attempt by Independence, MO to take control of several schools currently under the watch of KCMO and move them into the Independence district. This would be undoubtedly good for the people who go to these schools as it gets them out of the unaccredited KCMO school district and into a pretty good school district in Indepenedence. It will also raise the property values for the people who live in these districts pretty considerably.
The downside is that these schools are some of the top-performing schools in the struggling (understated) KCMO school district. This measure will further set back the schools that remain in the KCMO school district as it will, in the short term at least, make KCMO test scores go down even further by removing these higher-performing schools.
On the one hand, I want to vote for this measure so at least some folks will get rescued from our unaccredited schools. And, it's very hard to vote in favor of the status quo for KCMO schools.
On the other hand, I think the schools themselves are less of a factor when it comes to performance than other factors. And at the end of the day, I'm going to vote against this measure because I do not want to vote for anything that would make things worse for the least-fortunate areas of kCMO that will remain in KCMO school district and have no financial ability to move out of the area. A vote to screw over the folks in our urban core is just not something I feel like I can sign up for personally.
Either way, go out and make your voice heard. We're the luckiest people on the planet to live in a country that gives us a vote on what we think...and it's a huge shame that more people don't show their appreciation by taking advantage of it.
I'm not voting for anything to help the Meth Capitol of the US (ok, I think they're number 2 now)that has also banned me from living there. Their School Board might be competent but the majority of their city leadership is corrupt and on financially shaky ground (they cut their bus routes in 1/2 due to lack of funding). If it were Lee's Summit I might think differently...
Posted by: Michelled | November 06, 2007 at 11:17 AM