Today's dollars don't spend like yesterday's 100 pennies.
Especially not in payoffs for the future.
That said, it's time the members of the Hamilton County Board of Education talk back to Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger and to the members of the Hamilton County Commission.
After Coppinger sent a letter Tuesday to the school board making it clear that he will not support a $34 million annual budget increase for the county's public schools and instructed the board to send him "a school budget with no increased revenue," school board members told Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Tim Omarzu that they were "not surprised."
"We're not going to raise property taxes," Coppinger told the Times Free Press when he sent the letter. "I've always said time and time again, it would only be ... a last resort to raise property taxes."
Neither response, Coppinger's or the school board members', has any backbone.
The school board needs to pursue this.
On Monday, the school board is set to revisit the budget at 5 p.m. Here's one vote to put the ball squarely back in the mayor's and county commission's lap. Make them responsible for cuts. Make them face parents and grandparents.
In all likelihood, the mayor would pare the increased school proposal back to match last year's budget and ask the commission to vote for that. But if he (or any commissioner) wants to discuss and make other cuts -- like athletics or all art and foreign language teachers or ask three students to share a book or whatever -- make them bear that responsibility publicly and loudly.
Don't give those folks a hall pass on publicly debating the most important thing this county has to consider in charting its economic future.
Paying the piper
Speaking of economic futures and county taxes -- er, "revenue" as elected officials like to term what city, county, state and national governments run on -- Volkswagen's newest announcement that its expansion will be larger than previously thought means there should be more money in the collective government kitties than officials would like to let on.
A study for VW by the Tennessee Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee finds that the auto assembly plant's expansion will add nearly 10,000 new direct and indirect permanent jobs here. That's not counting the 5,300 temporary construction and other jobs VW's expansion will require.
By the numbers, the study says those two segments of jobs will add nearly $590 million in added annual income to the Tennessee economy. Each person with those jobs will buy things here -- homes or cars or groceries -- that will result in them paying property or sales tax to the tune of a combined $55.6 million in increased state and local taxes. Oops -- revenue.
What was that proposed schools property tax increase again? Answer: $34 million.
Driving up the ante
Then there is that backlog of at least $6 billion in Tennessee transportation needs -- $423 million for seven projects in Hamilton County alone. For that, some leaders, including Gov. Bill Haslam at one time, have been calling for a boost in state fuel taxes. Those taxes now are 21.4 cents per gallon on gas and 18.4 cents on diesel fuel. Federal fuel taxes add another 18.4 cents and 24.4 cents, respectively.
But like tax-shy county commissioners, state lawmakers from Chattanooga can't get revved up on the idea of raising gas taxes, saying that perhaps too much of that money has been going to fund bike paths, walking trails and sidewalks.
"All those are nice, warm and fuzzy projects, but is that what the road tax is really for?" Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, posed this week when the delegation met with reporters and editors of the Times Free Press.
He makes a valid point. But as we noted on this page in recent days, Sen. Bo Watson blew off any tax increases with a comment that "Growing our economy should add revenue [rather than raising taxes]." Watson went on, however, to add: "But cost (primarily in Tennessee health care since our state is holding its nose at $22.5 billion in Affordable Health Care money) is outstripping" that revenue.
Exactly. So how can these leaders continue to hide in the no-new-taxes weeds? The thing is, they aren't being thoughtful or honest about balancing growth and needs either.
At the local level, governments aren't paying much toward higher state health care costs. So gas taxes -- with or without increases -- from VW's 10,000 new permanent jobs and 5,300 temporary construction jobs (not to mention other new jobs from other companies) add to the roads budget at the same time that they add to the sales tax revenue and the property tax revenue.
It would seem that there should be some middle ground here on these needed budget boosts and proposed tax increases.