Property Taxes

Mayor Cicciline of Prov. had the guts to stand up to the Gov.'s plan to make one large urban education district while at the same time providing less funding. He simply walked out of a meeting designed to be a photo op & promo for the Gov's plan.

.... Cicilline accused the governor of stiffing local school systems in a budget that continues the trend of shifting the burden of financing public education from the state to local communities. "Property taxes are too high in every single city and town in Rhode Island," Cicilline said. "Education represents generally about half the budget of all those cities and towns." "Unless we address this issue of over-reliance on the property tax to fund public education," he said, "we're not going to be able to develop a system -- a rational system -- for sustaining public education.
While the Governor maintains that he is "increasing" aid to education, he neglects to mention that more pension costs are being passed on to local districts. This results in less net funding. No wonder the Mayor is angry. We all should be.

More of our local officials need to place the blame for ever-increasing property taxes on the Governor's plate. While he complains about taxes, he has no solution. In a community meeting 2 yrs. ago when the Supt. of Middletown asked him exactly how we could reduce expenses & cut taxes, he had no solution. Duh! When I tell my son I want better grades, I don't want to hear that he'll "try harder' or get a blank stare, "I dunno." I want specifics. And if he can't come up with any, I will. (BTW, I would place the Daily News link here for the article, but no can do. When will the News wake up to the income it is losing? Not to mention the disservice it does to those looking for info)

We need to fund schools through a fairer mechanism than the property tax. Period. Easy? No. But we expect the Governor to tackle the hard problems. Yet he hasn't even balanced the state budget yet. While we have a legislature, it's only part-time. Basically, they "tweak" the Governor's budget. It's the Governor's job to put forth bold new initatives. I ain't hearing any. But maybe that's the point. Bankrupt the towns & cities and gut the public education system. We already have councils & school committees & citizens at odds with each other come budgeting time in our district (I'm being polite here). Why do we make local politicans the "bad guys" and ignore "the buck stops here" guy?