Friday, April 24, 2009
Herenton Asks Council to Fund Schools
Mayor: "We need to do what is best for children."
Posted by John Branston on Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 4:22 PM
The mayor made the request Friday in a letter delivered to council members asking that they not "play games" with the budget he presented Tuesday.
The text of the letter follows.
"At the risk of appearing to be defensive or offensive, I want to make it very clear that the Administration has developed a sound budget and we are not going to play games over schools funding.
"In my judgment, the council should not have decreased the funding for schools and should not have lowered the tax rate. You ignored my advice and some council members are threatening to undo a balanced FY 2010 operating budget to hedge your mistake.
"My advice to the Council is to reinstate the previous 0.82 tax rate allocated for schools and let's moves [sic] on to other priorities for the city. In the final analysis we need to do what is best for children."
If the council does that and does not make any changes in the rest of the budget then it there would almost certainly be a property tax increase for city residents. The council managed to cut the tax rate last year by cutting some money for schools.
Comments (2)
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Oh great. Just when we get hit by the county appraisals and everyone's went up, notwithstanding the current, poor real estate market, we get this news that city property taxes will go up as well. I am a MCS teacher whose heart is in the schools, and I believe it was wrong for the city to remove its funding, but I am being taxed to death. This city's solution to everything is just to raise taxes. With a completely self-serving mayor (who knows what his real motive is here), is it any wonder that there's a stampede out of Memphis and Shelby County?
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