A large cup of coffee at McDonalds is $1.49. Let’s come back to that in just a minute.
The upcoming vote on the school levy has created some intense discussions. In this letter we didn’t want to list all the benefits of having one school. They have been shared many times in this space and in others. Although the alternative of trying to bring these 70 year old buildings up to par with current standards just seems like an impossible task. And the idea of “neighborhood schools” shouldn’t even be a discussion point anymore when only 10-15% of our kids walk to school. We would say 85-90% of our kids would not call them neighborhood schools.
Today we wanted to talk numbers. There is no fair way to split up the cost so everyone pays the exact same percentage. But we applaud the powers at be to introduce the income tax to try to be sensitive to our farming community. The idea of moving a good amount of the cost to an income tax was a good thing to do, to reduce the impact of a real estate tax.
Now if you have not had a chance to crunch the numbers to see what your own cost might be, let’s break this down. The information that has been shared many times has stated the impact on a $100,000 home and on the median income of $66,215 would equate to a cost of $18.47 per month. OK, what if we bumped the numbers to a $250,000 home value and an income of $150,000? We’d now be looking at approximately $42.94 per month. The two examples come down to $0.61 and $1.41 a day. What was that cup of coffee again? That’s right, $1.49! We have heard some people say this levy “is just too much.” We would respectfully disagree. Everyone’s home valuation and income is different, but when we break it down, these are not large numbers.
Do we really feel it is more important to have that cup of coffee instead?
We know there are two sides of every disagreement. We support the school levy. Obviously some people don’t. And we need to respect them for having their own opinion just as we hope they respect ours.
But those of you who are still gathering information, we hope you can see that this is a very manageable way to truly take care of our kids and our community. And with interest rates as low as they are, when will it be more affordable than it is right now? Our own kids have graduated so they will not benefit from the new school, but we don’t view this as a tax at all. We view it as an investment. An investment in our kids, in our community and in our future!
Kevin and Stacy Cochrane
Bowling Green
