The Auburn City Council met Tuesday with a large assembly of school officials and concerned citizens for an open-forum on an increase in property taxes to meet the demands of Auburn's rapidly growing education system.
The Special School Tax is a property tax that increases the standing $.50 on each $100 to $1.40 on each $100 of assessed value.
"This resolution is a direct response to a request by the school board asking us to set in motion a path to a referendum in which every citizen of Auburn will have a chance to vote on whether or not a property tax can provide for the facility needs of Auburn City Schools," Mayor Bill Ham said in clarification before the open forum. "If we pass this resolution tonight the next step is for the Alabama State Legislature to pass a local act authorizing a property tax referendum to be held in Auburn. Ultimately, property taxes will not change without a vote of the people."
According to Ham the main concern of citizens is they believed the sales tax was passed for the necessities of the high school.
"We passed a sales tax," Ham said. "We went from 8 to 9 percent and part of that money did go to the school."
According to City Manager Charles Duggan the money from the sales tax initiated in the summer of 2011 went into building Pick Elementary School, which will be opening in the fall, and to purchase property for a future school.
Funds from that tax also went into economic development for parks, the Renew Opelika Road Project and expenditures for road improvements.
"When the sales tax was passed there was a provision that said that if it was ever replaced with a property tax that the sales tax would automatically go away," Duggan said. "The calculations to raise the funds that are needed by the school system for the high school and the other improvements that need to be made to the schools plus replacing the sales tax would put us in the range of 18 mills of property tax that would have to be sought. When this was brought before the Council in the briefing by the Superintendent one thing we mentioned that if the sales tax remained in place that nine mills should be able to generate the funds necessary for the school system to carry out their projects."
According to Duggan, as of last year the sales tax has generated about eight million dollars.
"This City Council and ones before it have supported public education very strongly for many many many years through more sales tax and general fund money more than anything," Ham said. "There's been one since I've been on the Council since 1986, I'm aware of one property tax approval." "The next and most immediate challenge for the school district is providing facilities for our secondary grades sixth-12th," said Karen Delano, superintendent of Auburn City Schools.
"These facilities are quickly reaching capacity. The most recent information and data we have collected indicate the most prudent plan is to construct a new high school for grades 10-12, to reconfigure school grade levels for grades 6-9 and improve the conditions of our aging facilities."
Delano says that to do this the district will need an additional $8.5 million a year.
During the open forum Lisa Morgan of Janet Drive spoke against the property tax.
"I know Mayor Ham is an honest man," Morgan said. "I know the politics in this city are clean. I am proud to live here. And also I'm proud of the success and accolades of Auburn City Schools. I am very familiar with them and have read about them, written about them and I can't say enough about the job these teachers and students do in this city. But I find the timing of this catastrophic. As Mayor Ham mentioned the economy, the increase in sales tax from which many people are still reeling."
Morgan sees this money being spent unwisely relating it to buying a child a Porsche as opposed to Pinto. Morgan's solution was building up on our existing instead of building a new facility.
Morgan's other issue is that she does not see the government holding back on spending themselves.
"We're proposing a grades 10-12 school," Delano said. "We currently have a high school that serves 10-12. We would build a new facility for those grades. We would then have the facility that is currently the high school serve as eighth and ninth grade. And then the junior high presently would become a seventh grade and Drake would be just sixth. So we would reconfigure how we would use are facilities for those grade levels."
According to Delano, the operation of a new school would be approximately two million dollar a year.
"It sounds like a horrible figure, you know it kind of sticks in your throat when you say it and I understand that," Delano said. "And I am an educator. I will say that right up front. I've had to do a lot of study in looking at construction cost. We looked in the state of Alabama and what the construction cost had been over the last four years for schools and what were proposing for a high school is around the 80 million dollar mark. It falls very much in the average range of what per square footage costs for school buildings in this day in age. The high school we have now has approximately 150 sq. ft. per child, and again when you look across the state and look at averages that's very much in the range. The new high school that were proposing would only have 158."
In other news the Council passed five Agreements and Contracts totaling $853,700.5, which includes the $44, 643.85 going to the Water Resource Management Department to inspect Southside Sewer Basins.
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
