Since the public comment at the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners’ budget hearing on May 20, I’ve been using the metaphor of triage decisions in a busy emergency room to illustrate the school budget/property tax discussion. It doesn’t matter how many people with broken bones arrive to an ER or how loud they are, they will not be attended to if someone with a more critical condition, like a heart attack, needs attention. It feels like many commissioners see our public schools as just having broken bones, and the businesses and property owners who are concerned about tax increases as the people having the heart attack.
What is so difficult to convey is that cutting the school budget will create even more people having these metaphorical heart attacks. Right now, there isn’t certainty about who will lose their jobs or what roles will be cut within the schools, so no specific individuals are yet counted among the “critically ill” who need immediate care. When people lose their jobs, they will struggle, and without the school systems receiving the budget amounts they requested, people will lose their jobs.
Many of the people whose jobs are at risk are also property owners who would rather have a job and pay increased taxes than lose their entire livelihoods. The county will also lose property tax revenue and even more school enrollment when those whose jobs are cut relocate their families out of this area for new employment…