Hamilton County taxpayers – especially those with school-age children – need to pitch a fit.
On April 11, the county school board sued Chattanooga over $11.7 million in city-collected liquor taxes that were not paid to the school system since the merger of the city and county schools in 1998-99 — a period stretching across four mayoral administrations: Jon Kinsey, Bob Corker, Ron Littlefield and now Andy Berke.
Hamilton County School Superintendent, Rick Smith, and school board attorney Scott Bennett, have said they “hated” to file the suit but were simply at a stalemate with the city and couldn’t get meetings with Berke.
Based on emails obtained from the city, those claims appear disingenuous.
In fact, the city and Rick Smith jointly approved an announcement of a settlement in late August. The announcement called for the city to give schools $1 million, plus pay $500,000 on an early childhood development initiative at Calvin Donaldson Elementary School, fund the county’s e-books effort for four years, and donate the site of the former Poss Homes to support the county’s plan to construct new athletic facilities for Howard School.