Letter To The Editor – Highway To Financial Hell?

Highway To Financial Hell? – Jefferson County Edition
Letter To The Editor by David Seal

Jefferson County is at a fork in the road, an intersection of sorts that will determine the financial health of the county for decades. At the controls is a county commission of 21 people, charged with the decision of which way to turn. The path to the left involves taking on millions of dollars of additional debt to build two school buildings, a move that will place county taxpayers over ninety million dollars in debt. A right turn suggested by levelheaded thinkers would put the county on a road to fiscal responsibility. In the wings is a school board that is determined to steer the county into a financially irresponsible left turn, even in the face of the school choice movement and economic uncertainty.

A nationwide school choice trend is under way. Parents are removing their children from public schools for a variety of previously cited reasons. Vouchers and education tax credit programs are advancing in state assemblies and in congress. The recently decided Espinoza v. Montana case has cleared the way for public funding to be used by private religious schools. Public interest groups are now lining up to pressure states, and courts, to advance school choice. Does Jefferson County really need to build more government school buildings during this transition? How much evidence does it take to convince office holders that a profound change is under way?

With the recent shift in national political power, trending in the direction of socialism, the impact it will have on local governments is unknown. Historically, government entities at all levels have been able to depend on free-market productivity as a reliable engine to generate revenue. This is now in question, even in Jefferson County. If campaign promises are kept by the extreme left, profound changes will occur in every sector of our economy, healthcare, taxation, energy, telecommunications, construction, retail, and labor, all of which will certainly increase the cost of running a local government, and decrease the ability of its citizens to pay taxes and fuel the economy. Socialism removes the incentive for productivity and clouds the normal indicators used in the planning of municipal budgets, calling into question the future strength and health of our local economy. The issue of collective debt is closely related. Any government with less debt can weather economic storms and cope with unpredictability much better than those governments that carry burdensome debt loads. The big question is how significant will the impending financial storm be; and what policies will Jefferson County legislators adopt concerning county debt?

Jefferson County has a golden opportunity to dramatically reduce its sixty-million-dollar debt load beginning in 2023, provided we can convince elected officials to make wise choices. Debt service revenue is likely to remain level at about $7.4 million per year. In the golden year 2023, debt payments drop by about 3 to 3.5 million dollars per year, a reduction in payments (slack and wiggle-room) that our school board is touting as an excuse to put county taxpayers another $30,000,000 in debt for phase one of a school building program aimed at systematically replacing public school buildings in Jefferson County. Yes, we can borrow another $30 million without raising taxes, but the new debt will relegate county taxpayers to decades of continued wheel tax, adequate facilities tax, and consumption of 3.75 million dollars of property and sales tax annually. A fiscally responsible policy would be to use the financial windfall in 2023 to accelerate reduction of our collective county debt and work toward the goal of eliminating all tax-dependent debt.

The alternative is a trip on the financial road to hell with no end in sight to the school building program.