Almost 10 years ago voters in Pottawatomie County went to the polls and approved an education sales tax of .495 percent.
Each of the schools throughout Pottawatomie County, including three in this area, and the District Attorney’s Justice Center began benefitting from that tax when it went into effect starting July 1, 2016.
That’s nearly nine years since it went into effect after it was approved.
Each month since July 1, 2016, the schools and the Justice Center have had an amount directed to each of the schools’ accounts based on average daily attendance from the prior school year that is submitted to the county treasurer each August.
Coming up April 1 Pottawatomie County voters will decide whether to make the tax permanent. The ballot proposition states the “this permanent tax will be utilized for the building, transportation, safety, security, and technology needs of the school districts and the sales tax revenues cannot be used for salaries.”
It appears to me this educational sales tax has helped many school districts in various ways.
The school districts are allowed to utilize the funds to pay for various expenditures.
They can even assist school districts in paying for capital projects. While they are not allowed to utilize the funds to help pay off the bonds for a new school or new gymnasium, they may use them to pay for furnishing and equipping those buildings.
Good examples of that are the North Rock Creek and Dale School districts. Dale utilized the funds to help pay for equipping the new high school and the new gymnasium the completed several years ago.
North Rock Creek used them to help fund a SAFE room that holds four additional classrooms. A million dollar FEMA grant paid for most of it but educational sales tax money funded the rest.
District 1 County Commissioner Melissa Dennis has previously explained the way the process is structured.
Dennis said because how it is structured, the 14 school districts don’t actually handle any of the money.
She said expenditures by schools must first be approved by the district’s school board. Then, the school sends an e-mail to the county commission office describing in detail purpose of the purchase. If that item is $15,000 or more, the county commission has to put it out for bid.
Commissioners solicit the bids, they will open them and they must approve the bid during a commission meeting, Dennis noted.
If the item is under $15,000, the school lets the county commission office know in detail what it wants.
Then the county issues a Purchase Order for the item and when the school receives the Purchase Order number, it can go ahead and make the purchase, she said.
Once the school receives the item and gets a bill from the vendor, it submits the bill to the county commission which then pays the vendor.
“We are going to authorize the purchase and authorize the payment,” Dennis emphasized. “The schools never actually see the money, though it’s in their accounts. We are the keepers of the accounts.”
This process maintains the accountability promised the people Dennis believes.