Jennings Letter Triggers Chain Reaction

The combination of B3's report on the American's For Prosperity "distress call" and Lloyd Jennings anti-sales tax letter in Saturday's paper fired off a couple of email letters with the request to pass them on to others.

School Board Chair Bill, and sales tax proponent, made specific answers to most of Jennings charges:

• “Failure of Lee County School System to maintain facilities has led to the conditions at Lee Senior High School”. The current conditions have not just occurred. In the past four years, the school board’s maintenance and repairs budgetary request have never been fully funded. In fact over the past 15 years the school system has averaged only 65% of every dollar requested.

• Since the hiring of Jerry Pittman, as Director of Facilities, a detailed scheduled maintenance program has been established that is now resulting in the proper care of all facilities. Jerry and his staff of 14 employees now has the awesome task of maintaining and repairing 1.5 million square feet under roof with an average annual budget of only $0.50 per square foot.

• The very specific allegation that Lee County Schools is “sitting on $800,000” is blatantly false. Our unrestricted fund balance is $192,000, the equivalence of a household with a net income of $30,000 having a checking/savings account balance of $82.28 for any unforeseen expenses. For clarification, this fund balance is for the operating budget; there is no fund balance for maintenance and repairs.

• While the JLF report of inflation-adjusted spending of 16% is correct the full story states the state average placed on local governments in funding public schools have risen by 17.63%. Again, quoting from the same JLF’s report the state average per pupil expenditures is $1934 as compared to Lee County’s PPE of $1368, a bargain for Lee County tax payers.

• Contrary to another of Mr. Jennings misleading statements, many classroom teachers have indeed been hired while only two administrators have been added in order to assist our teachers in providing our children with a quality education this community expects.

Tatum distributed his letter in Carolina Trace, Lloyd Jennings stomping ground. Apparently Tatum's letter had little impact on GOP activist Mike McDonald who was sending out emails against the tax on Sunday.

So the tax debate has really heated up. Perhaps no one's mind has been changed but some widespread misinformation has been cleared up.