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Out on a limb in support of raising taxes for schools
© St. Petersburg Times As it is with the rest of the holiday season, New Year's Eve is a time for taking stock, remembering where I have been, girding my loins (not actually, it's just that I've always wanted to say that) for where I'm going, and seeking balance between the two. The past year has been a good one for me. I got married, I solidified some new and old friendships, I reconnected with a son from whom I had been separated for 20 years. In the new year, I face the prospect of retirement with much more joy than trembling. And, for balance, I can give thanks that I'm not Ray Gadd. Not that Ray is a bad guy. He is a good guy, an energetic, public spirited professional who heads a staff of 26 Pasco school psychologists. He and I were in agreement on wishing the county could come up with something more exciting than a tennis venue to spend tourist tax money on, and he was disappointed in me when I surrendered to the inevitable in realizing it was a done deal. So it's not Gadd I wouldn't want to be. It's just his job I wouldn't want to have; not the one working with psychologists, the new responsibility he just accepted that makes me wonder if he should in fact be consulting one. Gadd has taken on the job of convincing Pasco residents that they need to tax themselves more so that school construction can keep pace with expected growth. Schools superintendent John Long says that an estimated $170-million will be needed by 2007, and that, as things stand now, only $120-million will be availble. Whoa boy! If Gadd thought fighting the tennis stadium was a tough sell, wait until he tries to convince a large population of folks whose children are in their 50s and live in other states that they need to pay more taxes for the benefit of the critters that they don't want living in their subdivisions or skateboarding on their sidewalks. I'd rather try to sell collectible dinner plates with pictures of Saddam Hussein on them at the Bush compound in Kennebunkport. I'd rather show up at a Trent Lott rally wearing a Malcolm X hat. I'd rather try selling goldenrod bouquets to hay fever sufferers. Get the picture? We're talking tough sell here. Florida's history of selling itself as a low-tax haven for fixed-income retirees, and its inability to keep up with the resultant growth, is one of the state's major problems. The only way politicians can get elected is by lying and promising they won't raise taxes. Many of the state's residents, most of whom came here from some place else, feel that they already have built and paid for one governmental infrastructure and shouldn't be asked to do it again. Schools catch the brunt of that hostility from a population demographically tilted toward folks whose kids are long out of school. But a secondary growth streak that began in the 1970s -- a service economy aimed at providing for the needs of the first wave of folks who bought up $5,990 homes in the '50s and '60s -- also brought kids, a lot of them. The people that build the houses, run the stores and staff the hospitals and shopping malls are, generally, younger and have children in school. Getting people to make the philosophical generational leap and realize that you want the nurse who hooks you up to an EKG machine or the electrician wiring your new home addition to have had an adequate education, and that education serves all of the population, not just the child-bearing portion of it, is the job Gadds faces, and I wish him luck at it. Despite that I am approaching retirement, I got an object lesson in these facts 10 years ago that I hope will serve others as it has me. In 1991, my children and stepchildren were all in their late 20s and early 30s and long out of school. They all lived out of state. A young doctor working in New Port Richey went a little above and beyond and helped me to an early diagnosis of cancer, making my full recovery more likely than it would have been a few weeks or months later. She was a graduate of Gulf High School and the University of South Florida. Will I, retired or not, pay an extra penny in sales tax to give someone else the benefit that I got? You betcha. Will I, without a flak jacket, stand close to Gadd as he tries to sell the idea? I will. Well, figuratively, anyhow.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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