Days after the Cobb Board of Commissioners voted to delay imposing a stormwater fee, the chairman of the Cobb Board of Education blasted the proposed changes, saying they would they would be “grossly unfair” to taxpaying school parents.
Republican Randy Scamihorn said in “Just the Facts,” his occasional column, that the fee would “add to the monthly bills of hardworking parents and, again, apparently, schools across our county.”
The Cobb Water Sytem’s proposal would switch how customers are charged for stormwater services.
Currently, the charges are based on the amount of water consumption. The county wants to charge according to the amount of impervious surfaces of a building and property.
While homeowners have been most vocal in protesting what they call a “rain tax,” the impervious surface change would mean that commercial and institutional customers would be paying a larger share than they do now.
That prompted protests from the Cobb Chamber of Commerce last week.
Scamihorn wrote that “for our families who already live on a tight budget, this additional ‘fee’ on their already strained finances is grossly unfair.
“I’ve raised the impact this fee would have on our schools a number of times with district leaders,” Scamihorn wrote.
“Unfortunately, our staff does not have enough information from the Commissioners to know how much money would be taken from classrooms, but they know it would mean fewer dollars for teachers and students. We also know our schools could have been made legally exempt, but they weren’t.”
(You can read Scamihorn’s full remarks by clicking here.)
The Cobb County School District posted the message on social media channels and sent out a separate e-mail with Scamihorn’s remarks Friday.
Cobb government spokesman Ross Cavitt told East Cobb News Friday that as far as he knows, any specifics of the financial impact to the Cobb County School District haven’t been discussed, including a fee exemption.
Cavitt added it “that it is an irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars to allow an elected official to express a personal opinion through taxpayer-funded communications channels.”
After a contentious, hours-long hearing on Tuesday, Cobb commissioners voted to delay taking up a stormwater vote, and called for more public hearings to take place in August.
Among the issues is the uncertainty over how much more commercial and institutional customers would be charged for stormwater services.
Cobb Water System Director Judy Jones has indicated in various presentations that a majority of residential customers would pay between $2 to $4 a month for a dedicated stormwater utility fee and the commercial and institutional customers would pay up to $21 a month.
Those institutional customers include churches, schools and other non-profit organizations.
“After consulting with our legal team, we believe this bizarre ‘stormwater fee’ will be imposed upon schools, as well as the thousands of acres on which your schools are built,” Scamihorn wrote.
“The reality is that every school dollar taken for stormwater management is a dollar taken away from our children’s futures. . . . I know I speak for the majority of the Board when I point out that the latest proposal being brought forward by Cobb Commission Chair Lisa Cupid is fraught with problems for our schools and our parents.
“I’m not telling you how to vote; I’m telling you what is and isn’t good for our schools and Cobb’s children.”
On the Cobb school district’s Facebook page, some citizens pushed back against Scamihorn’s comments.
Laura Judge of East Cobb, a Democratic candidate for the Post 5 school board seat, noted that talks with commissioners about the stormwater fee have been “bipartisan, heated and long. That’s why one of my hopes as a future board member is to work with the other layers of government. Not start a blog bashing them.”
“I hope that as a possible member I can say that if our board chair is concerned, now the commission vote has been delayed, he’ll reach out to our commissioners and the school community to set up an education townhall about this rainfall fee.”
Another commenter found it ironic that Scamihorn was complaining of “yet another threat to dollars that belong in the classroom” when he signed off on spending $50 million for special events center for the school district, amid an “ongoing staffing and maintenance budget burden. . . . What a joke, Mr. Scamihorn. What an absolute joke.”
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Where’s Scamihorn’s outrage about the School Voucher Bill that recently passed in the Georgia Legislature?
It’s projected to defund Georgia public schools by $140 million, in just the first year.
Cobb spends over $20,000 per student, right at the national average. A $6,500 voucher is less than 1/3 of that. If homeschooling and private schools can provide a better education for that amount and create competition, what’s the problem with that? Competition breeds excellence.
The topic is about funding education, not about preserving the government education monopoly.
Nobody is “defunding” public schools. The money flows with the student. It’s not the property of the schools. The school choice bill that passed the legislature is a very limited proposal that gives parents in the lowest performing 25% of schools an option. The bill just passed provides vouchers for less than a third of what Cobb County spends per pupil. Instead of misleading comments about defunding public schools you ought to be more concerned about creating educational options for kids and parents.
Once again this is inaccurate reporting of the facts about storm water fees. What Judy Jones has said at every presentation is that the AVERAGE (she estimates that be 53%) homeowner would pay approximately $4 per month, while the average homeowner currently pays $2.17 per month. That is only tier 2 of 5 tiers of residential payment, and those tier structures are not yet complete. The rates for commercial properties Ichurches, businesses, malls, APARTMENTS, TOWNHOMES and CONDOMINIUMS would be SUBSTANTIALLY HIGHER. Therefore renters, would bear a much higher fee structure. Also, GRAVEL, COMPACTED DIRT and SWIMMING POOLS will be calculated as IMPERVIOUS! Also, it gets worse. They are codifying this without ONE PENNY spent to assess the current state of the system, inventory ALL of the associated piping and structures, or develop any plan to correct existing problems. They also are codifying the ownership of any UNPLATTED Stormwater components on private property to be the financial responsibility of the private property owner! They know records and drawings were lost in the 1980’s which has removed the ability of homeowners to refute ownership. This is a money grab FIRST, engineering and documenation SECOND, if EVER! This is poor reporting once again.