PARTNERSHIP SCHOOL: Part of the $13.2 million bond issue would go toward building a school on Mississippi State University property for grades 6-7.
By Steve Wilson | Mississippi Watchdog
A lot can happen in a minute. But how about a property tax increase?
The fight over a possible property tax increase in Oktibbeha County to fund school consolidation is now in the hands of a state-appointed conservator after a petition drive appeared to fall just short of the goal line.
Dennis Daniels, a candidate for county supervisor and one of the leaders of the petition drive to defeat a reverse ballot initiative, told Mississippi Watchdog he’d gathered 2,340 signatures from registered voters in the county school district, with the circuit clerk certifying 1,533 of them in a time crunch. The petition drive needed 20 percent of the school district’s registered voters, or about 1,526 signatures.
But when he and his helpers tried to deliver the signatures to the conservator’s second-floor office before the noon Tuesday deadline, they found stairwells and elevators at the Oktibbeha County School District offices clogged with children in the building for a noon meeting. The school district’s attorney rejected 131 of the signatures, telling Daniels they were just past the deadline, leaving them with 1,402.
“Those 131 rejected were in the office of the conservator by the noon deadline,” Dennis said. “The problem was they brought several busloads of kids in for the 12 o’ clock, parents and all that, so the stairwells and elevator were clogged. By the the time we’d gotten up there, the lawyer looked at his watch and said it was 12:01 and they would not accept them.
“If you go to vote and you’re in line when the 7 o’clock hour hits, you still get to vote, whether it’s 7:30 or 7:45. A petition is a proxy vote and if they’re in the door by the deadline, well then, they should’ve accepted them.”
Under a law passed last year by the Mississippi Legislature that combined the Starkville and failing Oktibbeha County school districts, state-appointed district conservator Margie Pulley was given the power to raise a bond issue for school construction in what’s known as a reverse ballot initiative. Daniels argued the school district office has no way to verify the signatures and he’s hopeful the measure will be put on the ballot.
“They only way they can verify those signatures is to go through the circuit clerk’s office,” Daniels said. “And if they do that, there’s no doubt in my mind we have enough signatures.”
No tax, no consolidation?
Starkville School District superintendent Lewis Holloway told Mississippi Watchdog a defeat of the bond issue could prove disastrous to the plan, which would merge the failing Oktibbeha County School District with the wealthier Starkville School District. Under the plan, the new Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District will be fully consolidated by July.
The money, according to Holloway, would be used to repair some of the poorly maintained, county owned school buildings, partly to fund a new “partnership school” on Mississippi State’s campus for 900 students in grades 6-7, purchase new buses and give county students some technological teaching aids such as electronic SMARTboards and laptops that his district’s students already possess.
CONSOLIDATOR: Starkville School District superintendent Lewis Holloway will run the newly consolidated Starkville and Oktibbeha County school district when its consolidation plans are complete in July.
He says it’s a matter of fairness and that Starkville residents shouldn’t foot the bill completely for the consolidation, the first of its type in Mississippi where a failing county district was largely absorbed by a successful city school district.
“It will absolutely devastate it (the consolidation plan),” Holloway said. “We won’t be able to build the new school, which will take the county students in and also provide resources to the county schools to make them successful by offering them the same computer programs we offer our (Starkville) students.
“We have no funding source to do that. There is a huge inequity of ad valorem that goes to pay Starkville residents as it does the county residents. This whole item was to equalize the taxation between the two districts and provide funds to make the consolidation successful.”
According to the Oktibbeha County Tax Assessor’s Office, county residents pay a property tax rate of 119.53 mills, while those residing in Starkville pay a rate of 139.09, a difference of 19.56. County residents would see their tax rates increase by 13 mills under the referendum.
The two school districts are definitely not a merger of equals. Oktibbeha County schools were taken over by the state in 2012, with their superintendent and school board removed, while Starkville’s school system received a C grade from the Mississippi Department of Education in 2014.
According to Holloway, voters in Oktibbeha County have not approved a property tax increase in 30 years. He said the characterization by its opponents that the tax increase was a surprise was in error, as open public meetings on consolidation had been held for the past two years.
While the law authorizing Pulley’s action was passed in last year’s session, the required legal notice didn’t appear in area newspapers until Dec. 22, just 22 days before the deadline. The notice was repeated on Dec. 28 and Jan. 5.
Patrice Guilfoyle, spokesman for the Office of Communications and Legislative Services at the Mississippi Department of Education, who assisted in the consolidation, told Mississippi Watchdog the legal notice was the culmination of a long process.
“After the amended legislation was passed (in last year’s session), we still had to finish the school year, prepare for the upcoming year, do all the work needed for the three-mill note to include working with Starkville, architect, bond attorney, etc.,” Guilfoyle said. “It just worked out that December was the earliest opportunity for us to begin that process.”
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