Montclair's High Taxes Blamed On Special Ed Kids
By Kamau Austin
Shame on the Montclair Times in its editorial and reporting of August 23rd, 2007 entitled "Requisites". It does make a decent case for No Child Left Behind.
Actually this program should be called "your child better make the grade and score high on tests or we'll leave their but behind" another year.
Then it makes a strong case that: the federal government mandates from the top down but doesn't provide the funding to the local governments. Leaving local governments to raise high taxes to cover the costs.
Okay I can follow that logic up to a point. Then when reporting the 5 schools that failed to live up to the No Child Left Behind standards it stated that these schools failed to make the grade because of special ed children, African American children, and economically disadvantaged children.
Although the paper didn't say as much, in the latter reported stories one could conclude that we pay high taxes for education that is not making the grade because of special ed children.
Monclair pays high taxes also because the leaders of the town haven't figured out how to leverage the assets of the town to generate revenue. They haven't attracted enough of a retail base to the town to help offset taxes.
In New York City the government assets are used to generate income. A case in point would be how the Manhattan Community College's Auditorim is leased to event promoters and generates income for the City.
There are many municipal assets in Manhattan that are leased out in this fashion. I think the Council should take the lead from a business man like Michael Bloomberg in leveraging the local governments assets to help generate income. Try to rent an available room in the Montclair library for a business event and they tell you its only available for nonprofits.
We need creative money making solutions to offset the tax squeeze in Montclair. Alluding to the failure of schools laden with special ed, African American, and poor kids isn't going to get it done.
Shame on the Montclair Times in its editorial and reporting of August 23rd, 2007 entitled "Requisites". It does make a decent case for No Child Left Behind.
Actually this program should be called "your child better make the grade and score high on tests or we'll leave their but behind" another year.
Then it makes a strong case that: the federal government mandates from the top down but doesn't provide the funding to the local governments. Leaving local governments to raise high taxes to cover the costs.
Okay I can follow that logic up to a point. Then when reporting the 5 schools that failed to live up to the No Child Left Behind standards it stated that these schools failed to make the grade because of special ed children, African American children, and economically disadvantaged children.
Although the paper didn't say as much, in the latter reported stories one could conclude that we pay high taxes for education that is not making the grade because of special ed children.
Monclair pays high taxes also because the leaders of the town haven't figured out how to leverage the assets of the town to generate revenue. They haven't attracted enough of a retail base to the town to help offset taxes.
In New York City the government assets are used to generate income. A case in point would be how the Manhattan Community College's Auditorim is leased to event promoters and generates income for the City.
There are many municipal assets in Manhattan that are leased out in this fashion. I think the Council should take the lead from a business man like Michael Bloomberg in leveraging the local governments assets to help generate income. Try to rent an available room in the Montclair library for a business event and they tell you its only available for nonprofits.
We need creative money making solutions to offset the tax squeeze in Montclair. Alluding to the failure of schools laden with special ed, African American, and poor kids isn't going to get it done.
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10:04 PM
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