Give a Man a Fish, You Feed Him for a Day
Posted: Friday, August 05, 2011
by Jack H. Schick
Can you give me some lunch money?
My school taxes are due again. I can’t afford to pay them in a lump sum, so I have to pay a penalty and do it in three installments. Each installment is as big as my mortgage payments. The last one is due right before Christmas. They had to increase the taxes a couple hundred dollars again this year. They do it pretty much every year. At least the state puts a limit on the percent they can raise them without getting permission from Harrisburg. They’ve been staying a tenth or two under it. Still, they’ve gone up about 80% in the last decade. I guess it’s just the cost of doing business-of running a school district, I mean.
I talked to my elected school board member last year. She promised that she would “fight against” another mil increase. She apparently lost the battle. I talked to my state representative at the same political fund raising rally. He said he would “fight against” the plan to establish a special state tax to pay for teachers’ and other government employees’ pension plans that are in trouble. It looks like they might have to do it anyway. I can understand why after looking at my IRA quarterly report.
The local school district claims that the problem is that the state isn’t given them enough money. It’s impossible to pay for everything with just the money they get out of local people. They have to get extra money from districts that spend less than they take in and spread it around. There just doesn’t seem to be enough to keep my taxes where they were.
Most of the newspapers blame the new Governor. They don’t like his political party to begin with and now is seems he’s cut state educational spending by a billion dollars. That seemed like a lot to me so I decided to check it out, try to find out what the reasoning was. When I got into the figures I was sort of surprised. It said right there in black and white that the education budget was actually increased by almost 5%. That’s way more than the raise I got or the inflation rate. I wondered how the reporter came up with the billion dollar cut.
With a little further investigation, I found out. The previous year, as part of the federal stimulus package and the “investment” in education the government doled out, Pennsylvania got a billion free dollars from Washington. I forget where they came up with the money to give out. Naturally, we spent it. We were required to by the feds. This year, we don’t get free money anymore. So, technically the budget was cut by a billion and we have to come up with it somewhere.
Ever since my buddy emptied his freezer and gave me some flounder he’d caught a while back and I got horribly sick on it, I’ve been leery of “free stuff.” I’m going over to the reservoir tomorrow and catch me a bunch of crappies for a fish fry. There are enough of them down there to feed me for a lifetime.
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