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New Tax Considered for School Needs
One percent of home's sale
- School Superintendent Jim Pughsley who, with School Board Chairman Joe White, asked NC Senator Dan Clodfelter to help fund a commission to find ways to pay for new schools
It's just one of the potential ways to pay for schools the Charlotte Chamber has studied, says Kit Kramer, group vice president of the Chamber's education group. Kramer is also a school board member. Kramer wouldn't elaborate on the other potential revenue sources being studied.
So far, the group is keeping its agenda hush-hush and wouldn't give Creative Loafing meeting minutes or any other written accounting of its activities as we requested or allow us to attend a meeting on Friday in which school funding and construction options were on the agenda for discussion.
"It's a Chamber meeting; it's not a public meeting," Kramer said. Kramer said that school and county officials and "the top public finance guy" at Bank of America had made presentations to the group about school financing, debt capacity and school construction. "There's nothing put together yet that we could really share at this point but I'll be happy to give it to you when we do," Kramer said.
Kramer did say, though, that the group is looking at alternative revenue sources and financing methods.
"We're now beginning to talk about alternative ways to build schools in terms of modular construction, or is there an out of the box concept that would allow us to build schools cheaper and faster," she said.
This appears to be part of a broader push by school leaders to find more money for school construction. Last year, says state legislator Dan Clodfelter, a senator from Mecklenburg, School Superintendent Jim Pughsley and School Board Chairman Joe White asked him to sponsor legislation to fund a state study commission to look at ways to pay for new schools. The legislation passed, and thanks to the state and a $100,000 grant from a nonprofit, the group will have $200,000 to work with next year.
"We set up a study to really look at what alternatives are available for financing capital facilities at the local level," said Clodfelter. "It's an open-ended thing, so there's not any predisposition to say we want to study whether to do X about school financing. What's motivating them is just the sheer press of trying to get enough dollars to deal with their maintenance needs."
The transfer tax idea was first raised publicly in June by consultants for the Charlotte Knights baseball team who suggested the tax as a way to help pay for the new uptown stadium the team has long wanted the city or county to build. Since then, some school board members have mentioned in passing that they too might be interested in tapping into a transfer tax, which the Knights' consultants estimated could generate about $70 million a year.
The school system plans to build 12,000 additional seats over the next decade, barely enough to meet the needs of the additional 4,000 students who show up each year. Those seats won't address the 18,000-student capacity overflow the system is currently dealing with.
Contact Tara Servatius at tara.servatius@cln.com
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