When will the national media pick up on the idiocies perpetrated by the Charleston County School Board? Surely not all school boards can be this dumb, or should I say self-serving?
Such was my reaction to Sunday's article on the potential creation of a special tax zone for the Beach Company to develop a large portion of Johns Island. See the blithely-headlined School District Would See Immediate Gain.
For $350,000 (probably the yearly cost of Superintendent McGinley's transportation) economically-challenged Board members such as Ruth Jordan are willing to forgo forever millions of future tax dollars from property taxes on this major development by one of Charleston's most well-connected development companies. On the other hand, Board member Chris Fraser's remarks are simply disingenuous: he's looking out for his own term on the Board, not the interests of taxpayers.
You can't make this stuff up fast enough to keep pace with its escalating stupidity.
Never mind that such tax zones are supposed to provide incentives to redevelop blighted areas instead of providing an easy way for developers to pay back loans to develop pristine land. Such a zone presupposes that, without tax breaks, a large portion of Johns Island would never be developed. Yeah, right.
It's a sweet deal for the Beach Company. As the reporter explains, "Imagine you're building a house, and the government agrees not only to loan you funding for construction, but allows you to pay it back with money you would have otherwise paid in property taxes." Apparently, Jordan and Fraser find the county's schools to be so well-funded that increased property tax totals are unnecessary.
We can understand why the City Council might be interested in seeing the Beach Company pay for infrastructure, but the position of members of the CCSD hierarchy is untenable.
The rest of the taxpayers of Charleston County should rise up in revolt before the School Board sells its soul for a mere $350,000.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
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No excuse for CCSD showing they are idiots (again), but county council may give this latest faux pas some cover. With enough public outrage (see the comments on the Post and Courier) it's doubtful county council will approve this TIF.
CCSD's Mike Bobby may yet extract his foot from his mouth without too many people noticing. Unless CCSD is planning to approve a TIF without the county goverment doing the same, this greedy proposal may just fade back into the fog from which it arose.
I'd also like to know who authorized Mike Bobby to say the school board had approved this trade off. I doubt if a majority of the board members were even aware of it. One source has said he definately didn't explain to board members what this trade off would mean if they did approve it.
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