Letter: How to Get Rich From Public School (Without Actually Educating)

People in Manatee are waking up and asking what happened to our tax dollars for our children's education over the years.

There's Gold in Them Thar' Schools!

Manatee County has been severely damaged by developers who were instrumental in getting the Sales Tax passed in 2002. By 2009, when the impact fees were disbanded, monies from the Sales Tax along with property taxes filled the school district’s needs. In the past fifteen years, Manatee County developers have avoided payment of hundreds of millions of dollars for school infrastructure which was required only because of new development. We the taxpayers paid for that infrastructure through property taxes and the half-cent sales tax. That is wrong. Growth should pay for growth.

How Did Developers Game the System?

First, they did so by funding the election campaigns of individuals who were willing do their bidding. Another way was that election laws allow developers to use each of their multiple companies to give candidates $1,000 per company, subverting campaign finance laws intended to limit the influence of special interests. Then the developers would tell their families, employees and subcontractors to donate as well. All you have to do is look at each candidate's financial file at the Supervisor of Elections website.

It was very common for one candidate that was backed by developers to have tens of thousands of dollars for their campaign, while someone running only to represent the interests of students, teachers and taxpayers had to try and compete with whatever they could raise in a grassroots effort. Over the years, we ended up with a board dominated by members that were indebted to the developers who supported them.

Forward to December 15, during the Manatee School Board meeting. The board was considering a recommendation made by Dr. Greene to reinstate the impact fees when it was suggested by the board to link the school impact fees to the half-cent sales tax referendum that the school board plans to put in front of voters this November. The board suggested that the developers would assist the school district in passing the extended sales tax and that the developers impact fees would drop to 50 percent of what was recommended and would remain at 50 percent thereafter never to be increased if taxpayers approved extending the tax.

That was done without the required seven day notice to the public, and there has not been any public discussion on the motion. Over a ten year period of the Sales Tax initiative, the developers have stood to gain a windfall of over $130 Million Dollars. This could have paid for a school in Parrish that the district now says it needs.

It's time the developers pay their fair share as recommended by the TishlerBise school impact fee study. It's time for the developers to stop taking our tax dollars and start supporting the education of our children.

By Mike Becks, Ed Goff, Norm Nelson and Peggy Martin