Assistant Superintendent Dee Fowler is continuing to beat the higher taxes drum in Madison.

Assistant Superintendent Dee Fowler said the system will need an estimated $53 million for new schools in the near future. Of that figure, school officials have budgeted and are situating the financing for a $13 million elementary school. They are interviewing architects for the project and hope to soon secure a site of 16 to 20 acres in Madison.

Fowler conveniently didn’t mention that per student revenue at Madison City Schools has gone up 8.5% after adjusting for inflation since 1999.

Less than two months ago the five year capital plan posted on the Madison City Schools website summed up to $47 million - in total.  There was only $32 million set aside for new school projects in that plan.  So in less than two months Madison has added $21 million in new school projects to their near term plans.

I smell something fishy here.  It appears that Madison City Schools is artificially inflating their “needs” in order to foster support for a sales tax increase.

• Madison County taxes to pay for Limestone County school?
• School Enrollment Up in Madison County Schools
• Madison shows Fowler the money
• Madison residents do not support sales tax increase
• Suffer with the rest of us

This entry was posted by Brian on Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 at 7:13 am and is filed under Education, Madison County, Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.