Over the past several months, local media including the News-Leader have gone out to the community with tales of economic woe on behalf of local governments. The City under-invested in the police-fire pension plan and we (the taxpayer) must find a way to fix it; polls suggest that the Police Department is understaffed and may not be equipped to handle the rising crime rate, especially gang related crime; the Springfield school district says it must increase teacher salaries in order to remain competitive and attract quality teachers and now Ozark Technical Community College says it must put a tax initiative on the upcoming November ballot in order to pay for increased faculty and programs.
My question, and one I am sure is on the minds of others, is: Where are the priorities? Whom are we to believe?
It is hard to argue that the police and firefighters were promised a retirement or that they deserve it. Likewise, if the Police Department is understaffed, then we need to fix that if we are to live in a safe, secure environment.
The Springfield school district just authorized a rather lucrative pay increase to both staff and teachers that reflects an overall increase of around 7 percent. Dr. [Norm] Ridder has said that we still need to increase salaries in order to retain quality teachers. Are we losing teachers due to salary inequities? The school district just benefitted from a windfall of new money due to increased state revenues, increased property assessments and being able to collect the full tax levy … where did that money go?
OTC says it needs more money in order to hire faculty and pay for programs. OTC President Hal Higdon says student enrollment and attendance are at an all time high and that the tuition rate of $78 is already the highest of all Missouri’s two-year colleges. You would think that increased enrollment equates to increased revenues which would mean a healthy budget. Could it be that they underestimated the cost to bring the Ozark campus online and are unwilling to admit that to the public? Hal Higdon also has stated that he wants to hire more “full-time” faculty vs. part-time (adjunct) faculty and that will only serve to increase personnel costs when salary and benefits are factored in. Is it true that at any given time during the week, there are unused classrooms at the main OTC campus? That would mean that facilities are underutilized or not properly scheduled.
Where does the truth lie?
Look at your property tax bill and your real-estate tax bill. You are already paying the Springfield school district 77 percent, fire protection gets 7 percent, OTC gets 3 percent and the rest is spread among other local government entities. Each time a tax initiative is proposed, the originator tells us it will “only add a few dollars to your tax bill” … which may be true, but when faced with several tax initiatives, how are we supposed to prioritize how our tax dollars are spent? How can people living on a fixed income continue to cope with these tax initiatives and still keep their homes?
Whose responsibility is it to dig down deep and get to the truth on these various tax proposals? Each local government agency will try to paint a “worst case scenario” in order to convince us that their need is the greatest. Is it up to the individual taxpayer to try and sort out these claims and try to find out the truth? I don’t think so, in fact, I think if the local media, including the News-Leader is going to come forth with these multiple proposals or ideas then they owe it to the public to do some old fashioned journalistic investigating to get to the bottom of the issues. The public should not have to weigh just the merits of what we are being told by the government agencies but instead, the media should take the lead and get the facts.
I challenge them to do so.
By Thomas Gargus, Springfield News-Leade
