I just got around to watching the 2/20/07 Florence City Council meeting. Councilwoman Pickens has demonstrated her total lack of knowledge with regard to educational funding. The roughly $2.5 million netted from the sale of the Brandon and Powell buildings cannot be used for curricular or educational programs. Those builds were built with capital funds; therefore, under law, any proceeds form a sale must be returned to the capital fund. That money is totally irrelevant to the discussion.
As Dr. Behrends quite accurately pointed out, sales tax funding is fickle at best. We (the city) had a great year this year; however, a bad year now and then is inevitable. It is very difficult to budget based on sales tax revenue.
Mrs. Pickens is also seemingly not aware that state funding is based on a formula called Average Daily Attendance (ADA). If she wants to help our schools, she'd already have her two children who are in various private schools enrolled in the Florence City Schools. That would be two more good students to add to our ADA numbers. (I'm not being sarcastic when I say that -- I've seen all of her children; all three are polite and well-raised. I'd vote for any of them before I'd vote for her!)
While she's in a learning mode, shemight also want to learn the difference between the words "moot" and "mute."
As far as the $96,000 goes, I'm really not worried about it either way. That amount is a drop in the bucket for either the school system or the city. It does annoy me, though, when a Councilwoman pretends to pontificate on a matter about which she obviously knows nothing.
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