4/5 "Republicans" on Bartow School Board Proudly Support Higher Taxes - Again.

Darla Williams the only Real Republican on the School Board. Final Vote is 8/19/24.

For at least the seventh year in a row, the Bartow County School Board voted overwhelmingly to raise property taxes. Yet again only Darla Williams voted to stop a tax hike. The others, who claim to be “Republicans” as they run for office, enthusiastically supported and vociferously defended the tax hike.

Taxes will increase on property owners by $12.3 Million in the projected ‘24-’25 school year budget. However, the money is going into the School Board bank account, and the “republicans” defended this as a righteous move for “future needs”. It is not being used to support actual expenses. In fact, the school board already has about $100 million in their current bank account.

Twelve citizens stood up to speak against the tax hike. They were all homeowners and included a single-mother nurse, homeschooling parents who don’t use the school system, policy wonks, the elderly and people who relocated here from other states to avoid higher taxes! They were roundly ignored, dismissed and at times ridiculed by “republicans” Tony Ross, Matt Shultz and Butch Emerson who claimed they had to do “what was right for the schools”. What utter pap and distraction!

The Bartow County School Board will meet on 8/19/24 at 6:00 pm to go through the routine motions of rubberstamping the massive, unnecessary tax hike. However, the School Board needs to hear from you. If you want to avoid a tax increase this fall, you need to ask them to oppose the millage rate and instead adopt the rollback rate.

They at least need to know that you are watching and will work to hold them accountable in the next election.

Show up at 65 Gilreath Road by 5:45 to sign up to speak on 8/19/2024

Pseudoscience Justification to Raise Taxes

The future needs projected are based on a consultants report that told them there will be increased school enrollment. That report was based on faulty population growth rates. This included the use of year 2000 fertility rates to project the increase. Further, the “report” was only a PowerPoint, without good data. It was drawn, at least in part, from ANOTHER dated PowerPoint from the UGA’s “Carl Vinson Institute of Government” from 2010. This blog author contacted the creator of that report and he verified that there was no academic research published at any time based on his presentation. Further data was shown to the School Board, by Dr. David McKalip (yours truly) that the fertility rates have gone down by 100% since 2000.

In response to the revelations of this data, Board Member Matt Schultz said something to the effect of that “we don’t need a Harvard study” to raise taxes to plan for future growth. It is very interesting since the School Board Superintendent felt they needed Consultants report enough to justify raising taxes in the first place. When it is demonstrated to be pseudoscience, smoke and mirrors and cherry-picked data, suddenly data is irrelevant!

School Board member Darla Williams even offered a millage rate proposal that would “only” raise taxes by about $6 million, instead of $12.3 Million. Not one other phony republican on the School Board would “second” the motion. They were demonstrating that they want taxes to be raised as high as possible.

There is only one near term solution to stop these tax hikes. People claiming to be republicans on the School Board who consistently raise taxes need to be voted out. That means it is time to find candidates who will run against MATT SHULTZ, TONY ROSS AND BUTCH EMERSON.

If people want to act like democrats and raise taxes every years, they should run as democrats. Otherwise they are the very definition of the word RINO - Republican in Name Only.

IN FREEDOM!