Edit: Time to work together for schools’ sake

Posted 6/20/17

The idea of forming an independent taxing district to fund education in Warren and Bristol has a lot of promise. After years of rhetoric from both towns and unfair aid disbursement that has cost …

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Edit: Time to work together for schools’ sake

Posted

The idea of forming an independent taxing district to fund education in Warren and Bristol has a lot of promise. After years of rhetoric from both towns and unfair aid disbursement that has cost Warren millions, there clearly has got to be a better way to fairly fund education here. Here are some essentials as the discussion moves forward:

Cooperation: This obviously is a must. Though they’ve been part of a regional district for 26 years, Warren and Bristol are as dissimilar as they’ve ever been. The recent court case filed and ultimately won by Warren helped make up for mistakes made with disbursement of state funds, but did nothing to bring the towns closer together. There is a good deal of suspicion and resentment among residents in Bristol, some of whom have called for the district to deregionalize. That is clearly not the answer.

Warren’s town council did the right thing last week, though, when members called for a cooperative discussion on establishing a taxing district here. They extended the olive branch and made it known that they’d like to work together on the district’s future. There has been little response from Bristol yet, at least publicly. But support from that town is essential. Warren can’t do it alone.

Let the schools decide: Currently, the Joint Finance Committee sets the school budget. But if a taxing district is established, who would get the nod? Our vote goes to the Bristol Warren Regional School Committee. For years, the committee’s members have been forced to work with a number handed to them from the finance board. Giving the committee the power to set that budget will allow members to prioritize for themselves and will also make those who finance education directly answerable to the public. Unlike the Joint Finance Committee, members of the school committee are elected by the public.

Normalize housing values: One knock of the current funding situation is that a $200,000 house in Warren is not a $200,000 house in Bristol; property values are significantly different due to the two towns’ tax bases and relative wealth. If all properties in the two towns are going to be combined in a single district for the purposes of taxing for education, current assessments must not be used. Instead, either they must all be adjusted via a formula that “normalizes” each to the other, or new assessments must be done solely for the purpose of education. Then and only then, applying an educational tax rate will truly be fair to residents in both towns.

Clearly, there is lots to talk about. But if cooperation and collaboration win out, Warren and Bristol have a chance to change education here for the better.

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Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.