By DAVID BOYLE
Last year the Anchorage School District asked voters to approve a $111 million bond which included rebuilding Inlet View school.
Voters said no to the bond by a 51-to-49 vote margin.
This year’s school Proposition No. 1, for $37.8 million, is mainly for improvements to nine elementary schools. But the district already has extra money in its undesignated fund balance to pay for the costs of those schools, and more.
You read that right: ASD is asking the voters for more money when it already has at least $46.16 million in its undesignated fund balance above the 8% required minimum.
This past fall the district was going to close six elementary schools because of a dwindling student population and a projected loss of another 5,000 students by 2027.
One must ask, “Why are we asking voters to approve construction projects at nine elementary schools when these same schools may be closed in the very near future?”
After its failed effort to rebuild the Inlet View Elementary School last year, the district is trying a different tactic to rebuild the school. It realizes that last year’s bond failure may have been due to putting the rebuilding of the that school on the ballot.
It has left this rebuild off this year’s bond issue.
The district learned from the failure of last year’s bond that the voters did not want to rebuild the Inlet View school due to the current excess school capacity and decreasing student population.
Apparently, the new strategy is to rebuild the Inlet View school after this bond is approved because the district has more than $37 million remaining in its School Bond Debt Reimbursement bucket. Just enough to rebuild Inlet View.
The district is defying the voters’ defeat of this bond last year.
ASD is also asking Anchorage property taxpayers for an additional $6.8 million, a 2.65% increase. The total property taxes would be more than $263 million.
The Anchorage School District continues to increase the burden on property taxpayers and renters while remodeling schools that may soon be closed.
And it is defying voters and bending to the Inlet View constituency in rebuilding that school even though the district has a surplus of elementary schools now and an even lower student population in the near future.
Give it up paypigs.
The failed public school system demands more money for worse results. Plus gay porn in libraries.
Wait, I thought we just raided the PFD for gratuitous education funding?
I am now paying more per month in property taxes than my house payment was when I bought the house, It is getting to be pretty ridiculous that I have to keep coming up with cash so elected officials can blow through it on useless or failed projects.
It’s what you are there for. To pay for the socialist utopia of the People’s Republic of Anchorage.
You’ve got to stop this silly thinking you and your needs matter to these heros of the Soviet.
And at some point you’re gonna need to think long and hard about how much longer you can/will remain in a community which sees you as a piggy bank.
It’s one of the ways the municipality can collect money to fund their projects. With the price of everything going up these days including construction, it only makes sense that taxes are going up also. On average what does this percentage raise someone’s tax burden by? $5 a month something like that? If the municipality wants to raise money, I would recommend they turn the cops loose on speeders and light runners. That right there will probably lower everybody’s property tax to zero. They’re going after the wrong people.
Greg…
The Muni has already turned the cops loose on speeders, etc… If you actually lived here you would know that. Speed traps are showing up on streets around the city that have never seen them before. I passed five different speed traps between my house and the Seward Highway a few weeks ago..
And, guess what?
I will not be enough to cover the wishes of the Assembly or School district.
.
Leftists, like the children they really are, just want, but they do not want to earn it. So, they use the power of the government to take money from others to make their wishes reality.
The failed public school model is a cancer on hardworking Americans!
You must have missed the point. The money is already there. And they won’t do preventative maintenance on a roof until it develops into an emergency and causes collateral damage that can be showcased by the media while they ask for more.
The headline writer is conflating two different things – operating and capital funds. The 2.65% increase is the ASD request to the Assembly for operating funds and has nothing to do with whether the proposition passes or fails. The proposition is for capital funds.
akbosco?
Weddleton? Is that you?
You pretended to be a moderate while voting in lockstep with the leftists 90+% of the time. Spending other people’s money is what leftists do, and I am not surprised that you are defending it.
The ASD has always been the greediest, most self indulgent money wasters ever to fleece the taxpayers. It’s always “for the children”, but they don’t even graduate half of the kids they indoctrinate. I graduated from a school in Oregon that was built in 1910, but the ASD has to have more tax money every year for maintenance. Sounds like a lot of poor construction to me. How much of this money does the gluttonous and insatiable NEA and the Anchorage Education Association skim off of these funds?
I am pushing for a sales tax to 100% replace property taxes so all the voters will feel the pain if they want to vote yes. The majority of home owners in Anchorage probably don’t know they will never own their property outright. The MOA keeps the deed for ransom if you don’t pay the taxes. One would think the large majority of home owners would vote to do this so everybody pays. All the non profits ( there is hundreds) and churches would then pay for the infrastructure they use every day. The non profits vote to raise taxes so they can get more money. This would stop or slow down the flow of money out of the home owners pocket.
Pretty soon I’m going to have to sell my house because I won’t be able to make my mortgage payment due to these tax hikes. How do they expect us to pay for this especially with inflation eating up any extra funds we have?
Sell out and get something you can afford.
Now there’s a solution. I’m sure he could afford the property when he purchased it you fool. Just because your golden parachute landed you in Florida doesn’t make it right for us that would like to finish here. We only seek the same rights and considerations afforded to drug addicts and vagrants without subscribing to their methods.
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