Perhaps it was bad timing OR great timing depending on your perception, but Janesville school board members recently voted themselves a $200 a month stipend. Personally, I think pay, raises or any form of compensation for the school board or city council should always go to referendum. I just believe that lawmakers slash local board members should not have the power to give themselves pay, raises or other taxpayer funds when they feel like it. But that's for another story.
But, what makes the Janesville school board pay decision exceptionally egregious if not totally damning in their fiduciary responsibility as a unit of local government is the fact that within the same week, not one board member or administration official stepped up to defend local taxpayers or school children against a recent city council deal exempting (refund) property taxes for a connected developer of a 260 unit apartment building for the next 17 years. That's right, 260 families paying competitive market-rate to a development firm, with property tax embedded into their monthly rent bill, will contribute NOTHING to police, fire, city operations, local roads and schools for the next 17 years and get this, ...the city justified their decision by claiming the assistance was necessary to ensure a reasonable rate of return for the developer. Their words. Not mine.
Of course nobody wants to deny a developer a reasonable rate of return. But it certainly should not be the taxpayers responsibility or come at the expense of a child's education to ensure that margin. The school board was silent.
On the surface this is nothing new for Janesville's dysfunctional economic planning. In order to keep their "but/for" demand of TIF District law honest, the city practically PROHIBITS development without TIF subsidies and has mortgaged off the best chance for tax revenue growth for the next 25 years. What makes this recent "incentive" deal so much more wrong than other kickback deals the city slapped together for developers, is the cost incurred on the community from those 260 families. That cost over 17 years is estimated at $7.6 million. So it's a double hit.
Mind you, this isn't about benevolence or hardship for those families or the developer. There is no hardship on their part. This is not low-income housing. They ARE market-rate. Besides not opposing the city's wrong-headed deal with the developer, the school board so far hasn't offered any plans for raising funds to pay for the education of children from those 260 families for the next 17 years. As it stands, somebody will be paying much more than their fair share in property taxes once again. That somebody is you and me.
This entire episode comes on top of early reports showing Janesville homeowners are about to get hit with a 3% shift increase in the overall general property tax burden shared with commercial property owners. So the school board's immediate priority was making sure they got some property tax relief for themselves.
For the record. Janesville school board members are: Steve Huth, Jim Millard, Greg Ardrey, Michelle Haworth, Karl Dommershausen, Kevin Murray, Cathy Meyers, Dale Thompson, Lisa Hurda.
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