| I wish some of you supporters of candidates would get your facts straight or at least understand the issue (as Nodnarb has clearly pointed out in his posts about the zoning issue).
Smcdem says, “50% of our local tax dollars go to EDUCATION.” The facts based on the approved 2003 budget is that the total operating fund is $203,390,215 of which the Board of Education gets $54,534,715, using simple rounding techniques (to the nearest tens of millions) it appears that education only receives 25% of the local tax dollars.
He also says, “Over the past four years St. Mary's County Public Schools avg age as gone down from 30 yrs to 18 yrs.” Considering that there are 25 schools within the county there would have to have been ten built within the last 4 years to achieve that change. So please name ten new schools, not the ones that were renovated, just new ones.
He then asks, “How can you "fully fund" education when you say your going to lower taxes at the same time?” Simple you make decisions not to support superfluous spending. This years budget has $1,215,740 to Non-Profit Private Entities. Additionally, the county gave $5,868,372 for the Naval Air Museum/Visitor Center. Why should the county do that with the people’s money? Cutting these items results in a 3% reduction to the total budget. Not too difficult is it? |