THE ONE BILLION DOLLAR
RUSD REFERENDUM
RUSD REFERENDUM
(Racine Unified School District)
A quick look at the referendum
by the numbers
RUSD serves the following 7 communities.
Racine, Caledonia, Mt.Pleasant, Wind Point,
Elmwood Park,
North Bay, Sturtevant.
There are approximately 20,000 students within the
school system.
There are about 150,000 residents within RUSD
There are about 150,000 residents within RUSD
The average home within RUSD is already taxed yearly at
a mil rate of appoximately $9.96
per thousand assessed or about 1% of the home’s value
goes yearly towards the
Racine Unified School District.
So an average $130,000.00 home is already paying the
school levy of $1,294.80 per year to the schools.
So what is the average cost of the referendum divided into the number by residents?
What is 1 billion dollars divided by
One hundred fifty thousand residents?
The answer is biblical, even prophesied!
$6,666,66…… per resident.
Let’s try this again
1,000,000,000 divided by One Hundred fifty thousand
equals 6,666.66…………..
The math works out.
Now let’s look at the average family’s cost.
For each man, woman and child living within the RUSD
school district, the future additional tax consequences are indeed dire.
The average family of four will be paying an
additional $26,666.64.dollars in
addition to the already overtaxed yearly school system property levies.
Will there even be brick and mortar schools
30 years into the future?
The insanity continues!
The honeymoon between tech companies and schools is long over as each entity is fighting for educational funding from the government.
The honeymoon between tech companies and schools is long over as each entity is fighting for educational funding from the government.
The love/hate relationship between tech companies and
schools are festering to new levels of
economic warfare.
economic warfare.
Tech companies
and public schools are now in full conflict of who is going to secure the
future educational tax dollars.
As all the dark forces continue to concoct new ways to
tax you and your family into servitude, the public is being pushed further and
further into deeper water, barely treading, trying to stay afloat with all the
extra baggage these taxing agencies have place upon your burden.
Looking for other ways to analyze the real impact of
the RUSD election?
How about dividing a billion dollars into the number
of tax paying properties within the district?
The numbers are not child's play.
Keep in mind the old adage:
Figures lie and liars figure.
What can HOT Government do for you?
Honest, Open, Transparent
14 comments:
I don't understand your numbers. Didn't the referendum seek approval of $540 million in principle, which would be borrowed, with tax payers having the payback obligation spread out over 30 years or so? The TOTAL payoff (principle plus interest) is over 1 billion dollars but again, that is all spread out over 30 + years. The tax impact on residents is a couple/few hundred dollars...maybe $500 per property, and that doesn't even factor in property tax payments from commercial property owners.
Taxes are an incredibly important issue, but so is infrastructure. Having functional school buildings and facilities is necessary, and Racine's school buildings and facilities are way, way, way beyond their useful life spans. Look around at the neighboring communities (e.g., Muskegoo, Waterford, Burlington, etc.). Those communities have kept their school facilities maintained and updated, and guess what??? Their students excel. Racine has allowed its school facilities to become dilapidated. Now it will take even more money to update. This is what happens when maintenance is differed for too long. Is the referendum breathtakingly expensive? Yes, but that is because the citizens of Racine didn't appreciate the importance of directing funds to school facility up keep and modernization.
I'm all for hearing you out, and maybe you are right about the tax burden, but you are going to have to go into way more detail...crunch the numbers and show exactly how the referendum will not increase taxes. Right now, you are just spouting hyperbolic nonsense. Tease out the threads of detail and let's see where things stand.
Keep up the work...you could and should do a better job, though.
To Anonymous:
The days of trusting and believing numbers presented by governing agencies is long gone.
Citizens need to think for themselves, not "trust" numbers without earning that trust.
How about you crunch all the numbers in different formats ie. per citizen, per student, per individual property tax burden and differentiate the burden between residential and commercial properties. Then Calculate the differences between actual funds and interest burdens between all these formats and we will publish your findings.
Then ask yourself if brick and mortar schools will be replaced by "smart technologies" in the foreseeable future?
The Unified school system is a disappointing failure of taxpayers dollars.
@legal stranger...interesting because I did, basically, crunch the numbers and applied a basic understanding of money borrowing. My conclusion was that the content of the blog was nothing more than baseless ranting. And here you come telling me to go "figure it out?" I'm not the one saying there is a problem. I am asking reasonable questions, and if you or know one else is willing to lay out some logic, then my conclusion is that you don't know of what you talk about. Perhaps you are anti-education. Perhaps you are anti-Racine. Perhaps you are something worse.
I'm fine leaving it at this, but neither the original post nor your response to my comment has laid out any reasonable showing of how the referendum will increase property taxes. Just because you say it will, doesn't make it so, and I for one hate taxes, but education and infrastructure don't magically take care of themselves. Maybe if students at Racine public schools had a nice facility to attend on a daily basis, they might be a little more inspired to learn and do better. I'm not saying a brand new school house is the silver bullet, but providing students with broken down, outdated facilities communicates that the community doesn't care about its own children. Have you considered the impact a message of not caring has on a child?
Finally, I categorically disagree with your suggestion that brick and mortar school facilities won't exist in 30 years. Where have you been for the last 90 days???? Distance learning has been a catastrophic failure, and if you think every family in Racine is going to decide to home school their children, then you are simply out to lunch. What working class parent has the time or flexibility to home school? Is that your solution?
Give me some logical facts and figures I say. You might think I am pushing back so hard that I can't be convinced, but you would be wrong. But you have to "show me the way." Don't tell me or talk down to me...show me the truth. If you do that, I might just believe you. For now, you and the blog author are just full of hot air.
Have you considered that you are the one who has been the disappointing failure to the children of Racine? They don't deserve modern facilities because "buildings won't exist in a few decades"? Really? That is your position? Listen to yourself. Shame on you.
Anonymous,
Yes shame on us, but not for the reasons you state.
First we apologize for not thanking you for reading our post, secondly for failing to thank you for having the courage to post a comment, albeit anonymous. We further apologize if you feel we talked down upon you in our response, we have read and reread our response and see no such message in our response to your comments.
Agreeing to disagree is fundamental towards coming to some type of consensus. and in no way did we talk down or force our blog upon you or anybody else. A 30 year taxing referendum is beyond reasonable. We question the legality of the referendum being a future generation who have yet to be born will be responsible and accountable to paying those taxes.
We offer this blogging format to forward your concerns.
Being you have already crunched the numbers, please feel free to share those figures with us and we will print those numbers to the general public. Let the public decide if your numbers make sense or not.
And finally, this blog is heavily monitored by law enforcement and other government agencies and we wouldn't be a bit surprised if they are monitoring the readers i p addresses as well.
We have been exposing criminals, unethical government officials, D A's and judges for around ten years now and plan on doing this for several more years.
And again thanks for reading.
@legal stranger...I gotta say, I just don't understand. You apologize for something that needs no apology and you bizarrely insinuate that my ip address is being monitored by law enforcement? I don't get it. This is "your" blog. You and "others," I suppose, created it and have created posts. I think the referendum is an important issue. Sounds like you do to.
If you aren't willing to respond constructively and explain your thoughts and positions, then why have the blog? Personally, I am all for rooting out corruption; so if you have been successful in the past, fantastic. Keep on going.
I am simply pointing out that the blog post about the referendum came across as...nonsensical, hysterical, and...to be blunt...unfounded. Frankly, I think many likely came to the same conclusion and just moved on. For me, maybe it was a lark or maybe I am particularly interested in this issue; so I thought about it, applied my own understanding of what the referendum is, from a financial mechanism, seeking to accomplish, and I wrote my comment. I might be completely wrong in my understanding of how the money is raised and, more importantly, how it will be paid back by the tax payers. I realize now, that I was wrong about the principle amount. It is actually $598 million, not $540 million. Perhaps frivolous when dealing with several hundreds of millions, but my point is that I am checking myself and open to you helping me understand where I might be wrong.
If your position is that Racine officials and, specifically, school officials are "corrupt," okay, but the spirit of my question stands -- how is the corruption manifested in the referendum? How are their numbers misleading? It sounds like you are saying that passage of the referendum will IMMEDIATELY cause an astronomical property tax increase, and I don't see how that is possible under my understanding of the referendum (which I have explained in my previous posts). So, help me understand. Where am I wrong, or how does the corruption show itself in Unified's presentation of the numbers?
You say a 30 year taxing referendum is beyond reasonable. Why? Is it just because the obligation is three decades, or are there other concerns? I do appreciate your point...30 years is a long time, but do you actually believe that there would be no school related tax obligation during this same 30 year period? Come on...taxes are here to stay!!! And that bugs me to no end, but again, education and infrastructure don't take care of themselves. So, since it appears to me that we are all going to pay school taxes for the next 30 years (assuming we live that long or stay in the area), what is wrong with the referendum? It seems amazingly ambitious -- visionary -- what a City like Racine deserves. Do you disagree with that, or do you think that the money will be absconded and the vision not achieved? Again, how can you justify doing nothing? The schools are literally falling apart. Some are approaching 100 years of age. That doesn't seem right, and why wasn't something done sooner?
@Legal Stranger...(continuation of my previous comment) Anyway, so many questions. I don't expect you to answer them all. Maybe we stick to the specifics of the referendum. Why is it so terrible? If property taxes will, in fact, immediately increase to the tune of $6,0000 per resident, then I'm with you! That will end Racine as we know it. It will simply cease to exist because most of the residents will not be able make those payments. It just seems all too...overblown...too catastrophic. Do you see my point? That is why I said in my first comment, I don't understand your numbers.
Can you explain it to me?
Finally, agreeing to disagree is not consensus. It is the exact opposite of consensus. Consensus, is not for the faint of heart because it most often ends in ruin. You have to be totally and utterly committed to achieving agreement to pursue consensus. Don't give up just yet. Help me understand your point of view. Justify your numbers or revise them, or throw them out. I don't care. I just want to understand where you are coming from.
Right now, you just seem to be howling at the moon. And I don't know why.
@Legal Stranger...I overlooked an important statement you made, which was an explanation of your position, at least in part. You said, "We question the legality of the referendum being a future generation who have yet to be born will be responsible and accountable to paying those taxes."
Acknowledged...it is troubling to saddle a future generation with the obligation to pay off monies borrowed today. Too boot, I appreciate that some, and perhaps many, of the new and upgraded facilities will be approaching or past their useful life in 30 years. I see the concern and the unfairness. Of course, can't we see a new referendum or similar school tax coming at that time? Isn't that exactly what is happening now? Certain tax obligations end, only to be replaced with new ones. Every generation will pay obligations hoisted on them by the prior generation, but they will do the same and reap the real time benefit, no?
This sounds facetious, but I mean it genuinely...how else could we raise the money to make RU's schools the crowning jewels of the state? If we could achieve that vision, wouldn't you want to?
Anonymous,
Please present your crunched numbers and we will post such numbers for public scrutiny.
email us @ racinecountycorruption@gmail.com
If you wish to remain anonymous, just say so and we will honor that request.
Also if you refer to the RUSD tax pie chart, you may find well over 45% of your property taxes already goes towards RUSD yearly. This is the largest single tax burden upon the property rolls while funding a failing educational system. Of course these are our opinions and and we will gladly print dissenting views.
@Legal Stranger...I will attempt to dig deeper on the due diligence. My very rough calcs amount to an annual tax burden of approximately $1250 per property. That is approximately $100/month. While a dollar is a dollar but $1250 per year is materially less than $6,666.66. I will also look at the pie chart. Still, I have yet to see you actually explain your opinions. Again, this is your blog. If you put out an opinion, I would expect you to be prepared to explain how you came to it and why you maintain the opinion. Are you saying the 45% of the property tax allocation is the most in the state? Most in the country? To what are you comparing it too?
From your perspective, what is keeping RUSD from utilizing the current tax allocation successfully? Sounds like it simply isn't enough money. Is that what they are saying?
Anonymous, how many taxing properties were used in your rough calculations?
In order to come to an average mil rate per taxed property, you need the total number of properties within the RUSD school district and then minus out the non taxed properties before you can come to some type of figure.
We provided generalizations using population and student data commonly available from numerous sources as a reference for discussion purposes.
If you don't like our examples then please provide us with your data and we will print it.
It really is that simple.
@Legal Stranger...the problem with your approach is that it isn't based on how property tax is calculated. You used number of residences, but property tax is based on the number of taxable properties. I used a number of 28,750. Brutal rough estimate, which may be completely wrong.
Anonymous,
We also have no idea how many taxable properties are within RUSD.
So here is your opportunity to make your case, do the research and we will print it and let the readers decide. Deal?
Deal...I will do my best. It may take me some time. I will report back with progress, even if the report is that no progress has been made. Believe me, I want to know just like you, what the tax impact is going to be (assuming the referendum is confirmed as passed).
Separately, I do support and applaud your effort with regard to appealing the recount. A 4 - 5 vote differential is very small, and it seems that a third and perhaps even a fourth recount should be done by completely disinterested parties. The temptation to skew the vote is too great to have anyone associated with the pro or con side to be involved in the recount much less overseeing it.
Great.
Look forward to seeing the results.
There are so many contesting issues with the referendum and it begins with chain of custody of the ballot boxes, the sealing and unsealing of the ballot boxes, ect.
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