School district doesn’t merit sales tax

School board members and candidates are fond of saying that the people who are against the sales tax renewal are denying the children of Manatee County. But let’s take a hard look at who is responsible for denying the children of Manatee County:

• It isn’t the taxpayers — they have awarded $350 million in sales tax dollars that have been squandered.

• It isn’t the taxpayers who gave the developers a pass on impact fees, thus putting $81 million in the developer’s pocket. In 2011 the local newspaper placed an article on the need for a new high school in Parrish. At that time, did the school board have any inclination to start collecting the impact fees? They did not!

• It isn’t the taxpayers who are still giving the developers an additional $10 million by phasing in the impact fees over a three-year period so as to cushion the blow of paying what they should have been paying since 2009.

• For the past 10 years the Manatee County School District has tripled our debt and mismanaged our hard-earned tax dollars.

Buildings alone do not make a great school district. Before we renew the sales tax, let’s have some accountability by the school board and administration. They need to show us that they can be good stewards of our hard-earned tax dollars.

Vote “no” on the sales tax extension.

This story was originally published October 5, 2016 at 5:14 PM with the headline "School district doesn’t merit sales tax."