The deafening silence coming from the Monroe City School Board regarding November’s upcoming tax vote is, Nobody has a plan. Candidates have signs up to run for office in November, but even the candidates avoid talking about their plans to pass a revised operation tax for the district.
After voters flatly rejected the tax in recent balloting, the electorate was clear: do your homework before you ask for our hard-earned dollars. Right now, there are serious, big issues that need to be tackled, but no one is talking about them, not publicly anyway.
The Reality Facing South Monroe
We cannot afford to ignore the 800-pound alligator in the room. Sooner rather than later, the district will need to merge some schools, and house them in larger, modern facilities. It’s going to require new taxes, but that will be a hard sell if we cannot win public confidence with the present tax.
To demonstrate responsible management with the future in mind, we think the board needs a blueprint for the future.
A Common-Sense Blueprint for Tax Reform
Public confidence is the currency of any successful tax initiative, especially in tough economic times. To rebuild that trust, the board should consider a strategic pivot we have advocated for in the past:
- Roll Back and Restrict: Roll back the current millages and strictly restrict those funds to operations and school safety.
- Make it Permanent: Remove the arbitrary 10-year expiration date and make this focused funding permanent.
While this restructuring would technically reduce school property tax income by roughly $2 million to $3 million a year, the district wouldn’t actually lose a dime. Because local sales tax revenues have already risen by that exact same margin, so the board’s bottom line remains stable. It’s a matter of management.
The result? Property owners get a tax break, the district keeps its funding, and the public gets a guarantee that their money is locked into safety and day-to-day operations.
When the time comes in a few years to ask for a new property tax—whether to build that new merged schools or to overhaul our crumbling 1960s-era campuses—voters will remember that the board rolled back taxes when they had the chance.
It’s About Planning, Not Politics
Let’s be entirely clear: the failure of the last tax vote was not a matter of racial division. It was a matter of a total lack of vision. Voters didn’t reject the school system; they rejected a blank check, with no plan.
With five new school board members guaranteed to take office this coming January, the community deserves a transparent, unambiguous roadmap for the future.
Even though the current board is on its way out, it would be a catastrophic mistake to coast across the finish line.
Leaving office without laying out a comprehensive plan for the next generation isn’t just lazy—it’s a disservice to the children of Monroe.
It’s time for the board to break its silence, show its work, and give voters a plan they can actually believe in.
