“We would love to be able to support an education SPLOST, but we feel that with this one, there’s just too many questions,” said Tom Maloy with the Marietta-based Georgia Tea Party. Superintendent Michael Hinojosa and board members Scott Sweeney and David Banks met with Maloy and J.D. Van Brink with the Georgia Tea Party and David Staples with the Cobb County Taxpayers Association to discuss objections the two groups have with the 1 percent, five-year sales tax, which is set to go before voters in March.
While the two sides say the meeting was cordial and informative, it did little to change the opposition’s minds.
“I still can’t vote for it at this point,” Staples said Wednesday. Maloy and Lamberton believe the vote should be held on a general election ballot and don’t think a $29.9 million career academy is necessary when many of the same programs are offered in existing high schools.
Staples would have liked the referendum to be on this past November’s ballot when Cobb recorded some of its highest turnout numbers. It would also save the $300,000 cost of a special election.
“We had such a large group showing up at the polls, that would have been an excellent time,” he said.
Maloy said building a career academy rather than hosting the programs at existing schools would put a strain on the already-low general fund, which pays salaries.
“We don’t really need an infrastructure that we can’t maintain, that will drain money from things that we really need like good teachers and maintain structures we currently have,” he said. “If SPLOST draws that away, then we’ll be defeating the purpose of education.”
Hinojosa, who is meeting with district staff on SPLOST IV today, said he thought the meeting went well.
“I know they felt better when they walked away,” he said. “I think they also felt better that they have an open line of communication … I offered to have another meeting with them. They didn’t say they would support (SPLOST IV), but felt better.”
Hinojosa said he would like to have support from both organizations, but couldn’t say if the tax would fail otherwise.
“We can’t worry about things we can’t control,” Hinojosa said. “We just have to get as much information out there as we can.”
Maloy said he’ll go back to the Georgia Tea Party board and talk to them about what he learned at the meeting.
“To be honest, I still think there’s a very strong chance that it will fail,” he said. “I’m not saying that the Georgia Tea Party is going to make it fail. I think it would have a much better chance of passing if the Georgia Tea Party supported it — but if we supported it, it would have to be a much better notebook and a lot of our objections will be overcome.”
“I don’t think these issues are just Georgia Tea Party issues but issues most of the public, if they’re paying attention, will probably object to as well.”
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Did the Georgia Tea Party oppose the 2011 education SPLOST election timing in Cherokee? Fulton? Gwinnett? DeKalb?
NO! Each were "Special Elections" (i.e. held during ODD numbered years).
Does the Georgia Tea Party oppose ALL elections not held in Nov. during even numbered years? Run-offs? Special Elections? Primaries? These all cost money to conduct!
Using David Staples questionable logic, the next election should take place in Nov. 2014, meaning major construction (i.e. Teasley ES, Osborne HS, East Cobb MS, Walton HS) projects would commence during the summer of 2015 at the earliest with occupancy in 2017 or 2018.
Where are my crumpets?
I would rather have a large percentage of the county approve a 1% sales tax than the small percentage that we know will turn out in March, so yes, while I would have preferred that the vote be held last month, my next choice would be to delay, rework the project list, and hold the vote in November 2014. I'm not okay with just spending money because we can and have gotten the approval of maybe 5 percent of the county. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly worthwhile projects on the list. But there are also some that I feel should have never made the final cut. Why not just add a few retractable roof stadiums for our football teams while we're at it? After all, it's just money, right?
I'd like to hear Mr. Maloy's discussion of more specifics that make the notebook project list bad. School principals had input on what they thought critical needs are at their school. If they were valid, they made the initial list. Then, after assigning cost estimates to the issues, the money that SPLOST would be expected to generate was budgeted out. According to what they've said in board meetings, they made sure that each school's top request was addressed in the list.
That seems like a logical approach to me.
They said over $2 billion worth of requests were made. But SPLOST would "only" generate ~$700 million, so a lot of requests won't be able to be addressed.
Mr. Maloy, please be specific!
The strategy worked with T-SPLOST, but it's an apples/oranges comparison.
With T-SPLOST, they focused on the rail/bus mass transit accounting for roughly 75% of the total T-SPLOST budget.
If we need to replace the only gymnasium at a high school, let's talk about that. But I question the *need* for 2 gyms per school. Unless we're raising NBA stars here, I'd rather see those funds go towards improving our kids education. Need more classrooms? Fine. Need new textbooks? Fine. Need new science lab equipment or technology to be used as teaching tools? Fine. Let's have that conversation.
The gym requirements are crazy as are the theater needs. I hate to pick on Lassiter, but drive by there and look at the theater that is being built right now. Everyone is going to want theirs to be that nice and that is going to be expensive. We simply cannot make this a priority when we cannot pay our teachers their full salaries and we are piling more kids in each class room. We also continue to play with academic time in the classroom to save money.
I am perfectly aware of what SPLOST is, but really, do we need all of these things when we cannot pay for the basics. It's like buying a new Mercedes when you have no money for living expenses.
I think the issue is more with state requirements and weather. Have you ever been in a gym with more than one class at a time?! Students can't even hear! Huge populations of students at high schools means you have to provide more "classrooms" for required classes, even if they ARE gyms.
Gym outside is subject to extremely hot weather (asphalt surfaces can be scorching!), cold weather (ice hazards invite lots of lawyers!) and heavy rain makes mamas call.
Times have changed. Societal expectations have changed. Look at it this way: It's far cheaper than even a single law suit or building another high school.