The tit-for-tat funding arguments between the Hamilton County commissioners and Hamilton County schools are beginning to look and sound a lot like our dysfunctional Congress.
Today, the installation of modern security cameras in 64 of the county’s 76 schools is being held hostage by a condition commissioners put on the project in February.
That was when the commission voted 7-2 to fund the cameras with $2.1 million the county recouped from the 2013 sale of an old Ooltewah school – but only if proceeds from the future sale of old East Brainerd school are split evenly among the commission’s nine districts and spent on things decided in consultation with the commissioner in each of those individual districts.
As much as county commissioners want control over school money (its their best way to court your votes), Board of Education members want control, too. After all, they actually understand school needs. And they know that school needs differ from district to district. So they neither want nor need the commission’s rather selfish geographic conditions on any future school sale money.
Commissioner Joe Graham, who was behind the condition in the first place, says the school board should fund the cameras with schools’ fund savings, and he accused the school system of “hoarding” money. That’s laughable considering the schools rainy day fund is $34 million – about three times smaller than the county’s $112 million.