School Board Has Much to Sell and Little Time to Sell It

Tuesday’s school board meeting opened with its longest-serving member calling for a re-vote on the recent selection of its newest member to serve as chair. The discord isn’t a good sign for a board that is already on very shaky ground with a public that it will ask in just three months to voluntarily chip in an extra $33 million in annual property taxes.

Board member Dave Miner was elected in 2012 but has yet to be given a turn with the gavel by the various other board members he’s served with. This isn’t really surprising, as Miner already attempts some rather activist moves from a regular seat, which I think would make even the allies he’s served with a bit nervous as to what he might try, were he given the power to set the agenda and run the meetings. He’s also rather long winded, and it’s a bit hard to imagine meetings staying on track or getting finished in a reasonable amount of time, were there not someone else with the gavel to rein him in when needed.

While taking umbrage the first few times he was passed over, Miner seems to have resigned himself to the idea that he’s not going to be chair and stressed that Tuesday’s move had nothing to do with his own candidacy. Instead, Miner feels that board chair Scott Hopes, who was appointed by Governor Rick Scott to fulfill the recently-retired Karen Carpenter’s seat in late July, has been dishonest in the support he expressed for the upcoming property tax referendum after voting against putting it on the ballot.

Miner claimed that Hopes was not enthusiastic enough in selling the need for extra revenue at a recent Republican Executive Committee meeting, after which the REC voted 48-2 against supporting the referendum. The other board members were less than enthusiastic with Miner’s motion, which was brought forth awkwardly after Hopes declined to put it on the agenda. It quickly died for lack of a second.

Miner has good reason to be nervous. Getting the taxpayers of Manatee County to cough up another $33 million a year, after they just did so in approving a 15-year extension of the optional half-cent sales tax (which will bring in roughly the same amount), will be no easy task, particularly in light of the recent revelations that the district had accounts that had not been reconciled for 11 months at one point–a fact that it neglected to tell the board, who was informed only by its audit committee. An update Tuesday reported that the district has completed all bank reconciliations for the 2016-17 fiscal year and is on track to be up to date for this year by December 20, but again, that’s not exactly what you call good optics three months before such a significant ask, especially considering the district’s long-term financial history.

As I’ve noted previously, Hopes' skepticism of the district asking for the extra tax revenues, ironically, might just put him in the best position to lobby for it. Hopes, who’d just recently been seated when he voted nay, argued at the time that he had yet to see where the district had made an open case to the people for needing the funds, or been specific enough about what the money would be used for. Hopes also advocated more public input and oversight, including a citizen budget committee.

Whereas the audit committee reports to the board on what the district has done with its finances, the budget committee would advise on what it should do with them. Again, this sounds extremely reasonable in terms of increasing public confidence that any new funding wouldn't just be thrown into the same old holes–none of which have yielded noticeable gains in the classroom. However, Hopes was excited to announce on Tuesday that the very first member of the committee would be none other than politically-connected developer Pat Neal.

That left a lot of people scratching their heads and a lot of others saying, I told you so. Not that Neal isn’t qualified in the strictest sense. As we’re often told, he holds a graduate degree in finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton School of Business and has made tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of dollars running his Neal Communities empire. When it has come to education, however, his biggest efforts have been in ensuring that he and other developers do not have to pay the school impact fees that support the need for new student stations that are created by growth–particularly suburban sprawl in areas where there are no schools.

Manatee taxpayers are still not over the fact that the school district just saddled them with $150 million in additional bond debt to pay for new schools needed in the quickly growing Parrish corridor after leaving developers off the hook in paying them for roughly eight years–to the tune of somewhere around $60 million–while those very same houses were going up. Neal began taking an interest in school board meetings last year when the district and its board finally caved to public pressure and contemplated reinstating the fees, and both he and fellow developer Carlos Beruff orchestrated a "phased-in" arrangement that benefited their own interests significantly. You can read more about that in a column a wrote back then by clicking here.

Tipping Neal as the founding member of the committee won’t do much to inspire confidence that a big part of its efforts won't be ensuring that those fees are reduced or eliminated, meaning that the funding they would provide will come from other sources, leaving less to educate the students. If there’s one thing the citizens of this county–at least the engaged ones–have seemingly made clear, it’s that they are not interested in subsidizing the profits of deep-pocketed developers by accepting in new taxes that which they have been spared.

Neal is also a close political ally of Governor Scott, to whom he’s been a very generous benefactor. Scott appointed not only Hopes but also John Colon, who cast the other nay vote against the referendum. The governor has also been a big proponent of charter schools and the expansion of school choice vouchers, both of which spell trouble for the traditional public school model. As Hopes will now be running the board agenda without having faced voters in an election, the value of perception is amplified, particularly given how little time there will be for meaningful action before they go to the polls.

Looked at over the past decade or so, our district may indeed be a poster child for why we should be looking at possible alternatives to the traditional model. That said, the alternatives championed by Scott’s wing of the GOP have, by and large, proven to be little more than a different way to spend a lot of money and get a poor return punctuated by corruption and scandal. Most citizens, even those who question the way public schools in Florida are being managed, probably don’t want champions of their rivals having a big hand in how they are run. Again, perception is important.

Hopes' job over the next three months will be to convince the public that he and his board are fully committed to being good stewards of a massive additional investment in our schools, and that the district administration is fully capable of leveraging that money into meaningful results. It goes without saying that there ought not to be any further indications that financial management in the district is anything less than stellar and open, or that the rush to pass the tax in a special election–one that will cost taxpayers $300,000, no less–is because the financial picture is even worse than we’ve been led to believe. Like I said, that’s going to be a tough sell. The clock is ticking. Every move counts.