Economic uncertainty plays key role in school issue defeats

Having suffered another school funding defeat, district officials in Lima and Columbus Grove will take little consolation in knowing these losses really aren’t their fault. These failures were not a mandate on what voters think of their school systems. Instead, voters are continuing to say no because of economic uncertainty.Lima school officials and supporters have made the case that the district is improving its performance. District employees also took extraordinary steps to try to persuade voters to pass the levy. If you are unimpressed with those steps, we invite you to tell your boss you do not want a raise this year, as all district bargaining units did. More than 61 percent of voters opposed the Lima levy in November. That number was just more than 53 percent Tuesday, still a loss, but an indication that the district is getting the message through to more people.Columbus Grove school officials have made the case that taxpayers spend a lot of money maintaining old, inefficient buildings. Elida made the same case — and passed its bond issue by the narrowest of margins. The district had twice tried to pass the issue, but it took voters seeing a scaled-down request to say OK. And that was by the thinnest of margins.For many voters, these requests had little to do with whether the districts really needed the money. Most people believe they do.Those same people, however, aren’t confident about the economy. They don’t believe they’ll have the money to further fund schools when they’re worrying about making ends meet for themselves. In Lima, for example, much of the opposition we saw had less to do with whether the schools needed money than it did with how the district proposed raising it. Add to that the economic uncertainty many feel, and few people will give themselves an additional tax burden.Unemployment is high. In Allen County, the January rate was 7 percent, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. It was 5.6 percent in Putnam County. That compares to 5.5 percent across the state and 4.9 percent nationally. The Lima area has yet to recover from the 2001 economic slowdown.Home foreclosures have gone up. Daily, there’s talk about whether the nation will go into recession or whether it’s already in one. Even workers who aren’t thinking about losing their jobs can look at their 401(k) retirement accounts to see the economy is dragging.School officials are not to blame for any of these problems. However, school officials do have to go to their voters directly to get new funding. Reality deaf representatives in Columbus and Washington, D.C. — from both parties — continue to ignore taxpayer pleas for relief. School officials are stuck begging for funds from people feeling burned by too many other levels of government.Lima voters rejected a five-year, 6.9-mill emergency levy that would have let the district raise $2.15 million annually. Columbus Grove voters said no to a 6.46-mill bond for 28 years and a 0.25-percent income tax for 23 years to build a new school.These rejections come at a cost.In Lima, the district will eliminate 16 positions, including 11 teachers. In Columbus Grove, taxpayers will continue to pay to maintain a building that marks a century next year. Upgrades will be necessary to limit the number of entrances, and modern technology will wait to grace the district.Those are tradeoffs voters accepted. And, those tradeoffs are ones the districts will either learn to live with or have to continue to live with.