Long before the Franklin County Board of Education dropped its campaign for a 10 percent increase in property tax revenue, even before the board officially voted to approve the special rate increase, State Journal Staff Writer Scott Unger was calling districts around Kentucky to ask about their experiences in similar circumstances. His findings appeared in Wednesday's paper following Monday's unanimous vote by the local board to rescind its rate hike.
In retrospect, perhaps the story should have run earlier if it could have impressed upon board members the difficulty of asking taxpayers to accept more than the 4 percent revenue increase allowed by state law. As it turned out, thousands of local residents signed petitions demanding a referendum on the issue. The board saw the writing on the wall and decided to save the $60,000 or so that would have been spent on a special election.
Of the five districts contacted for the article, just one prevailed in a referendum. Two others lost while another, like Franklin County, rescinded its initiative before it ever came to a public vote. Yet another school system got sued after a petition for referendum was rejected by the county clerk on a technicality.
Why do school districts keep seeking big tax increases that are most often doomed to voter rejection? Maybe it's because school board members and administrators, to their credit, are so committed to improving public education that they can't understand how anyone could fail to share their passion. "I think the board and I were a little bit nave," said Superintendent Anthony Strong of the Campbell County school system, where 63 percent of the voters killed a tax increase in 2005.
Franklin County Superintendent Harrie Buecker, who came here from Oldham County, now realizes that she, too, underestimated the local sentiment against higher taxes. Her own education came in the form of phone calls, letters and personal appeals from taxpayers who expressed their opposition.
Fort Thomas, the one school district Unger contacted that did win voter approval of a tax increase, mounted an intensive promotional campaign to convince constituents the additional money would not be squandered on frivolities.
With the nation in the midst of its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, it's questionable whether any public relations wizardry could have sold a majority of Franklin County voters on digging deeper into their pockets this year. And next year could be even worse, for schools and taxpayers alike.
This is not the first time true believers have been shocked to find skeptics loath to buy into their crusades. Some once thought city-county merger was a good idea, too, but it became a two-time loser at the polls. Now that the people have spoken on the school tax issue, education supporters need to hunt some other way to advance their cause in the future.