School Daze

My e-version of the local newspaper informs me this morning that of the Rochester suburban school districts in our region offering a proposed budget for voter review yesterday, 17 out of 17 passed muster handily.   Monroe County, the political boundary in which most of these districts sit, contains about 700,000 people.  Assuming half of them can vote, which may be right or may be wrong, it looks like about a paltry 10% of the electorate bothered to weigh in on literally billions of dollars to be spent let alone what is most assuredly one of the biggest complaints emanating from the mouths of the people who call this fair part of the country home - property taxes.

All of the budgets envisioned a nominal increase for the next school year and all fell under the newly mandated cap the state sets on tax levies to pay for our education bureaucracy.   That's super.  Initial impressions are that the education bloc is happily strolling hand in hand with the legislative cabal.   In the past, schools and their finances seemed destined for a panic.  Budgets were a crisis of management.  It was only a last minute hail Mary pass from Albany that got the needed funding to run the buses, turn on the heat, mow the soccer fields and bake those tasty fish sticks in the cafeteria.  Now, no crisis.  It's planned euthanasia.  We now are calmly sedated until we fade into darkness.

Like anything else in America, most won't notice a tiny tax increase each year.   It doesn't take a big bite out of the pocket especially if the lien-holder on your house is the one remitting the payment to the tax man.  You just pay the mortgage which, in these parts, is mostly a tax escrow contribution.  But, like the proverbial frog in the slowly boiling pot of water, even though one barely senses the threat, it eventually kills you.   Rather than throw big chunks of expensive cuts of beef to the insatiable lion, we've opted to insert the feeding tube.  The roaring beast is now satiated with a slow, steady flow of nutrients.   A money compromise all under the auspices of good government and the watchful eye of the state of New York.

Monroe County isn't getting any bigger population wise and it certainly isn't getting any smarter in comparison to previous generations.   Since we don't have more children to educate nor do we have plans to educate them to a higher level, I guess the additional money is needed simply to maintain the status quo.   I know it's just a small increase and relatively meaningless in the span of a year's time but you'd think at some point the people who complain the most about high taxes would put an end to it.   But there is no end to it, is there?   It's easy to complain to your brother-in-law in Florida about how high the taxes are in New York and how much you can't wait to move to Orlando.   But when offered the chance to do something about it, as yesterday's empty polling places showed, most New Yorkers are too busy to be bothered.