‘Time for the school board to gain some creditability'

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3:30 PM Wednesday, September 1, 2010

I addressed the Talawanda school board on Aug. 16, requesting that they change the district’s income tax to an earnings tax to give some relief to the retirees in the school district.

The retirees are struggling to pay their bills while the school board is approving extras for the new high school. The retirees who have planned for retirement and set aside some savings are seeing their investments erode. Stocks are down 30 to 40 percent, CD rates are down approximately 50 percent from levels of 2005. Health-care costs continue to rise and there was no Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) this year.

Property taxes in our district have risen significantly to pay for a new school in the face of declining enrollment. While taxpayers have had to make budget cuts, forced upon them by increasing costs and steady or declining incomes, our school board proceeds as if the taxpayers will always be there to provide unlimited funds.

In the near future, the Talawanda school board is likely to ask the taxpayers for more money to build the new Kramer (elementary school) and to provide funds to pay for salary and benefit increases through operating levies. The board has a history of giving increases in salaries and benefits for the staff and teachers. In the school board’s five-year forecast of operating expenditures, they show benefit costs increasing approximately 44 percent in the next five years.

It is time for the taxpayers of the Talawanda School District to be “brave” and support the change to an earnings tax. Contact the school board, attend school board meetings, and write letters to the editors of both the Oxford Press and the Hamilton JournalNews. Let them know that now is the time for the school board to gain some creditability with the taxpayers by giving retirees some relief.

Michael L. Dittman

Hanover Twp.

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