| Show TAX REVISION AND SCHOOLS the utah tax commission which was brought into being during curing the 1 1929 session of the legislature together with the legislative advisory committee and a number of competent attorneys is now hard at work to formulate the amendments to the constitution institution of the state of utah which will be necessary to revise and improve the present taxation laws several things like taxing mining companies com and banks determining tangibles tangi bles and intangibles making those intangibles produce a ta tax revenue and a few minor points of the tax laws to be proposed to and voted on by the taxpayers of utah in the elections of 1930 are still being contested by those whose interests will be affected by the new rules of taxation among the things not yet fully settled is the creating of an equalization fund for schools the equalization is intended to give equal opportunities for education to all children of the state at the present time those school districts which have N large revenues can give the children of their districts better opportunities port unities unifies than the children in such districts where the revenue is small some equalization is being afforded at the present time but it is inadequate and not based on principles which really would provide equality one cause for that inequality is the fact that the equalization fund available under the present laws is based on school population representative senta tive S M jorgensen who not only has wide experience in legislative matters having served in the state legislature for many years and for one term as speaker of the legislature but who also is fully conversant with the needs of the school districts because he has served for two terms on the sevier district board of education conceived the idea that the basis of equalization should not be school population but the average daily attendance by a thorough investigation vesti gation of the ratio between school population and average daily attendance in school mr jorgensen found that some of the districts with a large school population have less than sixty per cent of the school population as the average daily attendance he also found out that only one district in the state the beaver school district has a larger average daily attendance than thel the sevier school districts district which consequently 1 rates second highest in the matter of average attendance which in beaver county is 91 per cent of the school population and in sevier county per cent of the school population he consequently figures that those districts that have a higher daily attendance average ought to have a larger portion of the equalization fund than those districts where only less than three fourths of the school population are attending ing school his efforts are now directed towards distribution of the equalization funds on the basis of the average daily attendance and if he is successful this will mean for sevier district so much revenue from the equalization fund that the levy for school purposes can be reduced by several mills we sincerely hope mr air jorgensen will be successful |
