Amendments 60 & 61, Proposition 101 (Timnath: school district, colleges, closing)

[whoisjongalt]

No matter how much money gets approved for schools, IT IS NEVER ENOUGH. I hear this same argument about how much more money schools need EVERY election. Remember the one a few years ago? Referendum C was "desperately" needed to fund schools but most of the money ended up being spent on transportation instead. These people will say anything to get more of your money.

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by CAVA1990

And Virginia is no panacea of streamlined government. I always thought it was ridiculous that we have 99 counties, each with their own local government and school system.

Yes, I recall the separate bureaucracies there to collect the car tax, sales tax, property tax, income tax, license plates, etc.

Same thing here, lots of counties, each with it's own zoning rules, building codes, school boards, elected officials, staffs, police and fire departments, taxation rules, the list of duplication x 64 Colorado counties has to amount to many millions per year.

Sometimes I feel like a broken record harping on this manner of duplication. The nation has 3140 counties or equivalents jurisdictions. Can you imagine the massive over-spending that is needed to support all this redundancy. Only tiny Connecticut has no counties, they were eliminated in 1960, which begs the question about why aren't the other states picking up on this...

These are the sorts of cost savings that Coloradans could take advantage of; maybe someone should put a referendum on the ballot.....

[CAVA1990]

Has nobody figured out that the objective of these isn't to lower taxes but to turn out Republican voters to the polls to elect Republican candidates? Same reason the democrats putthe pot initiative on the ballot in CA and the Republicans the anti-gay marriage initiatives on others.

[parfleche]

Originally Posted by CAVA1990

Has nobody figured out that the objective of these isn't to lower taxes but to turn out Republican voters to the polls to elect Republican candidates? Same reason the democrats putthe pot initiative on the ballot in CA and the Republicans the anti-gay marriage initiatives on others.

NO people finally see a way get the gov to stop stealing and wasting our money. we work hard for it and these jerks hardly work and steal it. I dont agree with these amendments but will vote for them if only to get noticed by these idiots. It has to stop aomewhere and now is our chance.I dont want to be like a previous poster and pay 25000$ a year in property taxes, I would finally go bankrupt and loose my home while my neighbor in section 8 housing could care less cause the gov and my money got them covered. this cr$p has to end now!

[captain_hug99]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

Another thing I keep pointing out to deaf ears is that El Paso County Colorado has 40 school districts. FORTY! How much duplication of superintendents, staff, rules, boards, processes, etc is enough.

Agreed! Alaska and Hawaii have ONE school district, that's it.

I'm from Connecticut which doesn't even have county schools, every town/city has their own school district, unless a town or two have gotten together to consolidate districts. The property taxes from each town/city go directly to the quality of education, police, fire, of each town. One city I lived in had a mill rate of 90. That meant for every $1000 of property you owned, you paid $90 to the city. For my little $11,000 Saturn, I nearly fainted when I got the tax bill of $900! My property taxes on my HOUSE here in Colorado are only $1400 and my house is worth 300K.

Just to say one more thing about the state filling the hole that the amendments will leave. Right now, schools get about $6450 from the state per pupil, we currently rank 42 in the USA for expenditure on schools. In January, the state is likely rescind 6% of the money that they have currently promised the schools. If the state cannot fund the current amounts, how in the world will they fund even larger amounts through "state aid."

While school districts that can depend on property taxes won't feel the pinch as much as charter schools which rely SOLELY on state funding. They must pay everything out of that state funding, mortgages, teachers, etc... You want to see streamlined education? Look at a charter school budget.

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

I'll put it bluntly--anybody who votes for these poorly crafted amendments is a fool. First, they will not solve the problem that people think it will--overspending by state government. Second, they do NOTHING to solve the problem of out-of-control federal spending--which is where the BIG problem is. What they will do is decimate the ability of small, locally-administered taxing enitities (many with small budgets and unpaid boards) from being able to raise their revenues locally. They, along with a lot of other local entities from the school district to county government, will be forced to go to Denver to lobby for largely non-existent state funds to sustain their operations. How anyone thinks that forcing locally-controlled taxing entities to go plead to the state for funds is somehow good or efficient government needs to go get their head examined. Also, in case no one has noticed, the state itself is essentially bankrupt--so where these fools think that "backfill" money is going to come from is beyond me.

A a staunch fiscal conservative, I firmly believe that what IS needed in this state is a very frank discussion of how much government we collectively want--there is a lot of stuff that could be cut back or made more efficient. A good place to start, as I have stated numerous times, is to quit directly and indirectly subsidizing development by prohibiting developers from socializing all of the costs their growth causes upon the existing taxpayers. That alone would save a huge amount of taxpayer dollars.

In the meantime, these amendments need to be defeated--they are a very wrong answer to a problem which largely lies outside of any area that the amendments target.

One final note--Coloradans need to shut the hell up about their residential property taxes here. This state has about the lowest effective tax rate on residential property of any state in the Union.

I often find myself disagreeing with you, but mostly not this time.

What I find disappointing is that so many people who are going to vote for these initiatives are doing so because it's easy to just pull a lever. In the past, most have never gone to a governmental hearing or political meeting. They failed repeatedly to participate in the kind of governmental involvement our forefathers supported, but not seek the easy way out by voting in initiatives they don't understand in a process the founding fathers did not support.

To an earlier poster who criticized administrative overhead in schools, trust me, the cost is minuscule and the need is there. Otherwise you would have hundreds of teachers -- mostly very dedicated -- going in whatever each of them individually wanted with no accountability. For example, with a school of 1,000 kids you're likely to have about 75-100 teachers and 3 administrators. It's the administrators who manage million dollar budgets...and most of those budget dollars go for (and should) teacher pay.

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by parfleche

NO people finally see a way get the gov to stop stealing and wasting our money. we work hard for it and these jerks hardly work and steal it. I dont agree with these amendments but will vote for them if only to get noticed by these idiots. It has to stop aomewhere and now is our chance.I dont want to be like a previous poster and pay 25000$ a year in property taxes, I would finally go bankrupt and loose my home while my neighbor in section 8 housing could care less cause the gov and my money got them covered. this cr$p has to end now!

1. Government employees and elected officials do not steal your money.
2. For the most part, they work hard...many far more hours in a week than you do.
3. You don't agree with the amendments, but will vote for them. Now that's intelligent logic?
4. Stop listening to the Sarah and her type, and actually go out and learn about the issues and become involved at the grass roots level of representative government like our founding fathers believed in.
5. Ballot initiatives got California where it is today. Now Colorado wants to follow suit???

[parfleche]

Originally Posted by phetaroi

1. Government employees and elected officials do not steal your money.
2. For the most part, they work hard...many far more hours in a week than you do.
3. You don't agree with the amendments, but will vote for them. Now that's intelligent logic?
4. Stop listening to the Sarah and her type, and actually go out and learn about the issues and become involved at the grass roots level of representative government like our founding fathers believed in.
5. Ballot initiatives got California where it is today. Now Colorado wants to follow suit???

Wow did you peg me wrong! I have been involved in local politics for 35 years and am tired of no results and wasting time. whats with the listening to Sarah comment grasping are we?

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by parfleche

Wow did you peg me wrong! I have been involved in local politics for 35 years and am tired of no results and wasting time. whats with the listening to Sarah comment grasping are we?

That's called democracy. You participate, you attempt to win others to your side, and you influence government. Apparently your positions were not supported by the main stream of Colorado.

[CAVA1990]

Originally Posted by phetaroi

That's called democracy. You participate, you attempt to win others to your side, and you influence government. Apparently your positions were not supported by the main stream of Colorado.

Wouldn't that more likely be the mainstream of Mancos? Isn't that area fairly Republican though?