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Show Moody Discusses School Amendments And Effect On County - BY MILTON E. MOODY County School Superintendent The two proposed constitutional amendments dealing with financing financ-ing our public schools that will be voted on in the November Election, Elec-tion, will increase the power of the legislature in dealing with the manner of financing the public schools. Had the constitution been left in the form in which it was written writ-ten in 1896 then it would not now be necessary to propose these amendments to the constitution to give the legislature power to deal with this problem of financing the district schools. At that time full power was given to the legislature to "establish and maintain a uniform uni-form system of public schools throughout the state." But since then in the process of providing our existing state school funds, amendments have been inserted in the constitution containing language langu-age which limits the revenue available avail-able for the district schools to the amount specified in the existing funds. The state levies on tangible property pro-perty are definitely limited to the amounts necessary to raise these three state school funds and if revenue is provided from other tax sources for either district school or equalization purposes, then the constitution stipulates that such other revenue must serve the purpose pur-pose of reducing the levies on tangible property rather than increasing in-creasing the amount of money available for the district schools. These provisions serve the purpose pur-pose of limiting the levy on tangible tangi-ble property for state school funds but they often have the effect of (Continued on page six) Moody Discusses School Amendments And Effect On County (Continued from first page) forcing the levy on tangible property pro-perty to higher mill rates in many of the school districts of the state, Washington county is at present the highest. This arrangement makes it impossible for many of the districts to get adequate revenue in spite of excessive local mill levies. The addition of these state funds constituted a distinct step forward in the solution of Utah's school finance problems but they are now inadequate to meet the needs and recent happenings happen-ings have made conditions worse rather than better. In the first place, the assessed value of tangible property has declined de-clined over the last number of years to the extent of approxi-, mately 26 per cent for the state as' a whole, but in many of the school districts the reduction has been much more than this. With this declining assessed value in the local districts and state school funds rigidly limited, the school finance situation in many of the 40 school districts has become extremely ex-tremely difficult. In many of the school districts over the last number num-ber of years this situation has been met by increasing the local mill rates imposed on tangible property. Tin's is a very unfortunate unfortun-ate situation from the point of view of both our schools and our systems of taxation. The tangible property tax is already bearing too heavy a tax burden and it is a very unfortunate situation where the only means of maintaining funds for the school is by increasing the mill rates on this property. The adoption of the constitutional constitution-al amendments will open the way for the legislature to secure finances fin-ances for the public schools from other revenue sources instead of increasing the tax burden on property. pro-perty. Under the amendments to the constitution no revenue in the new uniform school fund provided for by the amendments can ty derived from the taxation o tangible tangi-ble property. This will make it possible to transfer part of the burden for the support of the schools to other revenue sources. The amendments have great significance signi-ficance from the point of view of tax reform as well as school finance. |