Don’t forget to vote Flexible Funding during pre-primary early voting, Griffiths says
BY TERRY SCHMIDA
KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER
Longtime School Board member Andy Griffiths has a message to area early voters: Don’t forget to vote within the be-here-before-you-know-it March 2-14 window established by the Supervisor of Elections – and be sure to check the box to renew the revenue-neutral Flexible Funding for Monroe County Schools.
“Right now there are about 12,000 early voting ballots out there on people’s kitchen tables,” Griffiths said. “The danger is that they forget about them, and we lose this benefit.
The mechanism, which Griffiths called a tax “reallocation” has over the years helped the School District go from the middle of the pack to the top of the deck, in terms of teacher pay. That’s where we need to be in order to retain long-term teachers, and other district personnel and their families, he added. Flexible Funding is popular because it’s mostly invisible and painless and necessary in most people’s eyes, but Griffiths worries that this kitchen table issue may just get lost in the shuffle of mail literally on that very table, when they need to be counted at the office of the Supervisor of Elections.
“We started doing this in 2004 and the legislature required we go to the voters every four years, to continue this transfer of funds,” Griffiths said. “So we have passed this is 2004, ’08, ’12, and ’16, and now we are out asking again in 2020.
“In 2004 our teachers were average pay in the state and yet live in the highest cost county. So after promising the voters we would levy a tax for salaries and lower the capital tax by exactly the same amount, so there’s no tax increase, but simply a shift from the capital fund to the people fund. Since we started doing this our teachers are now top paid in the state, across the board.”
Of late Griffiths has taken to the airwaves, pitching the same message:
“This 1/2 mil tax is worth $15,000,000, or put another way: 15,000 per employee. Or another way, 1765 per student. With no increase in tax, just a shift of existing taxes. We promised this to the voters in 2004 and have kept the promise ever since.”
County early voting sites will be open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., beginning Monday, March 2 and ending Saturday, March 14. The primary itself takes place on March 17.
County Early voting sites include the Supervisor of Elections offices at 530 Whitehead St., #101, in Key West; 10015 Overseas Hwy, in Marathon; and at 102050 Overseas Hwy. #137, in Key Largo.
Other early voting sites include the Big Pine Key Community Park, End of Sands Road, 31009 Atlantis Dr., on Big Pine Key; and the Islamorada Branch Library, 81830 Overseas Hwy., in Islamorada.
For more information, visit https://www.keyselections.org/
No Comment