Liverpool — To the editor:
Reading Russ Tarby’s article, “Consensus kicks door open to future tax relief” [page 4, Feb. 3] one is lead to believe that the Liverpool school district “demands” money from its taxpayers and that those budget increases are somehow out of line with the district’s needs. Let’s take a closer look at the reality.
Tarby bemoans the fact that Liverpool school taxes have gone up $22 million in “the past decade.” Taken as an average over those 10 years, that equates to a 1.8 percent increase per year. That is hardly an exorbitant yearly increase.
Tarby wonders why taxes haven’t gone down because student population declined from around “10,000 students being educated … in 1991” to 7,330 students this last year. The problem with his statement is that he is comparing apples to oranges. He complains about the increase in taxes over the last 10 years, then compares it to a student population decline over the last 25 years!
In the past 10 years (Tarby’s original comparison) the student population has gone down from 8,180 (2005-06) to 7,330 (last year), a decline of only 850 students (an average of 85 fewer students per year — and no where near the 2,700 student reduction that Tarby would have you believe).
Tarby also wrote “our schools demand millions more dollars every year to do less.” Tarby writes this as if the school district is some autonomous entity over which no one has control. He must have forgotten that a school board elected by community members runs the school district. Tarby must have also forgotten that the Liverpool taxpayers approved each budget increase. Tarby has apparently also failed to recall that it was the taxpayers, against the recommendation of the school board, that both demanded that Liverpool Elementary not be closed due to declining enrollment, but also voted to spend money to renovate that aging building.
continued — Lastly, Tarby fails to mention that in the last 10 years both New York state and the federal government approved Common Core mandates without giving school districts the proper funding to pay for them. At the same time the state government has ignored a 2006 NYS Court of Appears ruling and continues to withhold billions of dollars in funding that was designed to help districts like Liverpool.
While no one likes to see their taxes go up, the voters in Liverpool have made it clear that they prefer to provide the school district with the funding necessary to furnish their children with a very adequate education. Tarby should not be blaming the school district if he feels his taxes are too high; he needs to convince the taxpayers that they are spending too much money on their children’s education.
Lynn Davis
Liverpool
