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I was kind of curious what the general thoughts were on this measure. I have been seeing a lot of tv exposure talking about the 1% sales tax increase to fund schools. Even though the only thing on the TV ad's talk about is the help it is going to be to the schools, there is much more that is involved. It basically says:
"The South Dakota Sales Tax Increase Measure will appear on the November 6, 2012 ballot in the state of South Dakota as an initiated state statute. The ballot measure would implement a one-percent sales tax increase, from 4 to 5 percent, that would begin in 2013. Specifically, the measure would take 20 percent of the revenue and place it in the South Dakota Moving Forward Fund.
If the measure's effects that are being predicted by supporters materialize, it would give schools approximately $725 more per student annually and about $70 million would be added to Medicaid reimbursement rates per year, according to reports. Additionally, the state would receive $18 million of generated revenue to handle increased Medicaid caseloads."
1% is not going to break anybody, but evidentially, people have a very short memory. Many years ago, when the Lottery was trying to sell itself to South Dakota, the big drive was, "South Dakota Residents will never have to want for school funding again, because the Lottery proceeds will go directly into school funding."
Is not the lottery still going? What happened to the school funding? I have heard arguement that South Dakota now has more students so the lottery funding can't keep up, well, if there are more kids, there are more parents that buy lottery tickets.
Has South Dakota investigated other avenues of school funding? I know that you are taxed to death on property taxes and part of the property tax is for schools. But other avenues can pay for schools.
I don't know if you are familiar with Wyoming Schools, but they are well funded. Our teachers are some of the best paid teachers in the nation. Our schools, by law, are maxed out at 16 students per classroom and cannot have 17. Our property tax pays NOTHING towards schools. There are 4 counties that do have a very minor levi for school funding and those counties are the counties with the heaviest extractive industry and the levi is to pay for the extra transient load, however, it is very little. In Sheridan County, one of the counties that do have this levi, my 1800 sq ft home taxes were just over $200 per year. I'm talking total tax. The actual school's portion was less than $30. of that $200.
South Dakota has the ability to raise massive school money without tapping into the people's pocket again. Extractive industries. There is oil in South Dakota and for some reason they are not tapping it. If you look at this link, you will see all of the producing oil and gas wells. You will see the basic formations just by how the wells are spaced and where they are located. You will see massive formations that simply STOP at the South Dakota State Line. Why? You can zoom in and see exactly where the wells are located and if it is horizontal drilling and fracking, it will show the direction and distance of the drill. Here is the link: http://www.eser.org/
I guess what I am asking or wondering about is that Measure 15 is to fund schools among other things, but the state has the ability to fund it elsewhere. Why are they not doing so?
Before anybody pitches a fit, I believe that the schools should be the number one priority when it comes to funding. The old saying "You get what you pay for" really applies when it comes to schools and what our children benefit from the schools. Education is #1.
There is some oil production in South Dakota. Will we ever see levels of production like that of the Bakken formation? Nope.
Property Taxes are expensive, it mostly funds schools and county goverments. There was property tax freeze, which school districts have the option of opting out of freeze, by special election.
The state has been down on sales tax revenues for several years. The state is bound my their constitution to balance their budget every years. In the lean years, every prorgram including education is cut.
What measure 15 wants is a penny sales tax, which is a 25% increase in sales tax. They want to earmark that money for education. However districts are given carte blanc on what to do with that money. I take issue with that. I am all for funding education if bringing money makes for improvements. However, the fallacy comes that throwing more money at a problem somehow makes it go away.
A higher salary doesn't equate to better teachers. Frankly, look at what a superintendent makes... IMO many are overpayed
There is some oil production in South Dakota. Will we ever see levels of production like that of the Bakken formation? Nope.
Property Taxes are expensive, it mostly funds schools and county goverments. There was property tax freeze, which school districts have the option of opting out of freeze, by special election.
The state has been down on sales tax revenues for several years. The state is bound my their constitution to balance their budget every years. In the lean years, every prorgram including education is cut.
What measure 15 wants is a penny sales tax, which is a 25% increase in sales tax. They want to earmark that money for education. However districts are given carte blanc on what to do with that money. I take issue with that. I am all for funding education if bringing money makes for improvements. However, the fallacy comes that throwing more money at a problem somehow makes it go away.
A higher salary doesn't equate to better teachers. Frankly, look at what a superintendent makes... IMO many are overpayed
But they are not earmarking it just for education, they are earmarking for several programs, medicaid, education, and ??????
What Wyoming determined, a long time ago, is if you pay the teachers a decent salary, they tend to stay, they become a part of the community and take a vested interest in what is going on. Teachers that are part of a community really take an interest in their work and extra activities, like plays, or choir, or sports, and by doing that, the kids really benefit.
But you are right, some of them it wouldn't make any difference what you paid them. So you get rid of them. hahaha
Our Junior High has an Indoor olympic sized swimming pool for swimming and diving teams. Our Highschool has 2 football fields, one for practice, one for games. 2 soccer fields, 8 tennis courts and most of all, funding for projects, arts, activities and we end up with kids that really like to go to school.
I disagree with your assessment of oil. The Bakken formation goes into North Western South Dakoa. A formation doesn't just stop dead at the state line. But it seems to in this case. The formation is underneath the soil, but nobody is tapping it. Is South Dakota not permitting it? Maybe they are permitting at such a cost that nobody can afford to drill and it wouldn't be cost effective to produce. I don't know. It just seems funny that the drilling stops dead, exactly at the state line. Same with the formations in Wyoming, there are wells right up to and including Newcastle, but you hit a fence at the state line.
Wages for all South Dakote are lower. The wording of Measure 15 is very loosely worded. The lottery is still going great guns here. The lottery was supposed to fix the budget problems. Throwing more money at it.
The latest study indicates we as South Dakotans will not have the oil rush. Production will remain consistent. History has time and again supported that conclusion. Even with technology we maintain.
Roughly half of each dollar in sales taxes collected goes to fund Medicare and Schools. Sales taxes have worked for the last 77 years.
I read the first article and have to agree with it completely. The fact is, NOBODY will ever experience the oil boom that North Dakota did. They completely screwed that one up. The state opened permits and sold to anybody that had the money and they did not limit the number of permits in areas. Wyoming, has boomed and busted before and they learned from it. They limit the number of permits so that any rush is only going to push population by 10 percent. That way a town can grow, infrastructure can grow, and they won't be devistated like areas of ND did. Williston went from 15,000 to 27,000 in less than a year. There is no way that any area can handle an increase like that. Then they started throwing rediculous ordinances like, "No RV's inside city limits of Williston" and forced 400+ rv's out along county roads.
But, 1.1 million barrels to 6.5 million barrels of production, is a healthy gain in anybody's books. SD doesn't have to boom, but they do need to smartly increase so that the oil production can start paying for the schools. I guess, the biggest thing is that the last thing a state should do is tax the people. Every avenue should be thoroughly researched and exhausted before they turn to taxing the people. I was curious if they had done that.
The second link you provided, I read a few bits and pieces and now I am going back in and read it completely. At first glance, it looks like the Gov has really planned things out and hopes to bring up infrastructure with oil groWth, which is outstanding. It was funny, Williston went from 15k to 27k and only had the opportunity to add 2 cops. By the time they got ready to add infrastructure, they couldn't compete with the wages the oilfields were paying. As a result, if a person couldn't get a job in the oil fields, wasn't good enough for the service industry for the oil fields (roughnecks, pipe transportation, CDL drivings, etc...), then they would turn to law enforcement. Hmmmmm. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Off to read the second link. This is good, I am learning a lot more about South Dakota. Did you notice on that Well mapping, that Wyoming has massive amounts more than North Dakota, yet we have no boom going on. Those wells in Wyoming took 75 years to get to where they are.
I know that you were kind of looking at Sheridan. About 6 years ago, Sheridan had a typical Wyoming Boom with Methane Gas. Sheridan increased by about 2000 people. Sheridan was able to obsorb that number. It filled the motels, RV Parks, and every available apartment, but didn't cause anything bad. Restaurants sometimes had a slight 10-15 minute wait for a table, but other than that, you really didn't see anything negative. When the boom busted, there were not a lot of empty houses setting around. Steady growth.
Here is another map that is very interesting. The Powder River Basin Oil formation. Doesn't it seem funny that the oil formation is very rough for boundaries, except for South Dakota. For a formation it seems funny that the edge of the formation is an exact straight line that coincides with the SD State Line. You can't tell me that all the oil, exactly ends at that line.. hahahahaha
The funny about the methane beds, one of my brothers had a job working in the field. Well about 6 months ago he was laid off. I don't care about this brother, so I don't know if he has a new job or what he is doing.
Williston was caught with their pants down on this.
As far as the new tax... I think with sales tax revenues going up, being our economy is stabalizing and the revenues coming in, more money for medicare schools will roll in. Until the next downturn in the economy when sales taxes slow down, less money comes in for Schools and Medicare which are the two biggest disbursements of sales taxes. Extra penny or not, any fix will be short termed as it is.
I stand by assertion that a tax increase at the state level will not be good for the citizens, and is boardline irresponsibility on the school districts... What are school boards cutting and where can efficienies be found, what can be done to improve the end result.
In 40 years the number of teachers has increaded while the number of students is down significantly, and the states is spending 2.3 times more per student.
The state has been increasing the amount over the years, with no real change in ACT scores.
I have seen the pay incentives before and they don't work. They cause more harm then good. The only place that pay incentives work is in production lines and then only for that particular plant.
With schools, it is sorely missused. You cannot compare any two schools, or even any two districts. For instance. If you are going to give incentives to teachers that excell, based on student scores, how can you compare school scores from Douglas, vrs Stevens? You have one school that has very transient student base and a bunch of farm kids and you are going to compare their scores with a school that has a solid student base from parents that are upper income.
Can you compair the math teacher with the special ed teacher? How about the English teacher with the English Comp teacher? The Metal Shop teacher with the Machine Tool Teacher? The new teacher to the teacher that has been teaching for 20 years and knows the exact knowledge base of incoming students and exactly what she/he has to do in order to push that base onto the next level?
What I saw happen was that the entire school, shut down normal classes, 2 weeks prior to testing and instead, taught how to take a test, what to look for on the test, how to answer when you didn't know, deductive reasoning, etc. So the kids taking the test, were taught the test. The only fair way to do that is a team of teachers walk into a school, totally unannounced and say, "Today is test day". hahahaha
The Gov says that he is going to put together a panel of people to evaluate the teachers and present the bonus's. Who are these people on the panel and what is their background when it comes to evaluating somebody else's performance? Professionals in the field? If so, I would imagine they are paid for this evaluation, or pulled from other jobs to do this one. If that is the case, is their other job now suffering due to their absense? What does it cost, several hundred thousand dollars? Cancel the panel, cancel the bonus's and take that money and put it into the schools for supplies, give ALL teachers a pay raise.
You are correct when you ask how the schools have evaluated cost cuts, what can they do to excell with limited resources? If you want to give teachers a bonus, give it to teachers that write a point paper on the best way to cut costs in the schools. Let them write that point paper on their own time.
I have seen the pay incentives before and they don't work. They cause more harm then good. The only place that pay incentives work is in production lines and then only for that particular plant.
With schools, it is sorely missused. You cannot compare any two schools, or even any two districts. For instance. If you are going to give incentives to teachers that excell, based on student scores, how can you compare school scores from Douglas, vrs Stevens? You have one school that has very transient student base and a bunch of farm kids and you are going to compare their scores with a school that has a solid student base from parents that are upper income.
Can you compair the math teacher with the special ed teacher? How about the English teacher with the English Comp teacher? The Metal Shop teacher with the Machine Tool Teacher? The new teacher to the teacher that has been teaching for 20 years and knows the exact knowledge base of incoming students and exactly what she/he has to do in order to push that base onto the next level?
What I saw happen was that the entire school, shut down normal classes, 2 weeks prior to testing and instead, taught how to take a test, what to look for on the test, how to answer when you didn't know, deductive reasoning, etc. So the kids taking the test, were taught the test. The only fair way to do that is a team of teachers walk into a school, totally unannounced and say, "Today is test day". hahahaha
The Gov says that he is going to put together a panel of people to evaluate the teachers and present the bonus's. Who are these people on the panel and what is their background when it comes to evaluating somebody else's performance? Professionals in the field? If so, I would imagine they are paid for this evaluation, or pulled from other jobs to do this one. If that is the case, is their other job now suffering due to their absense? What does it cost, several hundred thousand dollars? Cancel the panel, cancel the bonus's and take that money and put it into the schools for supplies, give ALL teachers a pay raise.
You are correct when you ask how the schools have evaluated cost cuts, what can they do to excell with limited resources? If you want to give teachers a bonus, give it to teachers that write a point paper on the best way to cut costs in the schools. Let them write that point paper on their own time.
Now that makes too much sense. Which is why it would never happen the way it should.
Here is a map of the oil and gas wells in S D. ArcGIS Explorer Online
I am not sure why the google map does not show them and I am not sure why most of them do not produce any oil or gas, but there has been considerable drilling in Harding, Butte, & Fall River counties. Or does this map only show where permits to drill have been issued?
uh
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