No need for a sales tax hike
To the editor:
Once again the Lee County School Superintendent has been beating the island drums for a half cent sales tax.
The reason is student enrollment is exceeding the total capacity of the current buildings. The latest comments were made at a meeting of Realtors. The question that begs to be answered is why the superintendent failed to show up at the Lee County’s meeting to complain about the massive loss of impact fees that the county commissioners cut last year and followed through again this year of keeping major cuts in impact fees for the school district?
Could it be that the school district has 10,000 empty seats now in the system and that the county commissioners would have had an opportunity to question the school superintendent about the real needs of the school district? Could that be the real reason for not showing up at the county commissioners meeting and pleading to stop these major cuts to school impact fees last year and again this year?
Obviously, something is wrong when the School Board sits back and does nothing to defend the sources of income that they feel they severely need.
This school board has lost its credibility with the community when they started down the road of ignoring the 10,000 seats that are empty and playing the we-are-so-broke without actually trying to come clean about their actual needs, if they do have any.
The realm of a possible referendum for sales tax for additional schools should be dead on arrival. In fact the only referendum that should be considered is placing a restriction against any sales tax that Lee County commissioners can make.
Leo Amos
Matlacha