News Vote Yes on I-88
I-87, the initiative that would have directed local property taxes (about $156 a year on a $400,000 home, raising $40 million a year) to smaller class sizes has been yanked from the November ballot by King County Superior Court.
(The judge sided with the city, which argued that city taxing authority could not be used to fund schools, a state responsibility…nor could citizens dictate city budgeting through initiative.)
In this week’s issue The Stranger Election Control Board endorsed I-87’s counterpart initiative, I-88, which is on the September 19 primary ballot. I-88 authorizes the ability to levy the tax. I-87, the one that got thrown out, directed the funding.
The I-88/87 campaign is appealing the decision to the Washington Supreme Court…and so, we still urge you to vote yes on I-88.
City Council Member Peter Steinbrueck has pledged, if I-88 passes, to propose council legislation enacting 87—which directs money to smaller class sizes, all-day kindergarten, and arts and music education. “I’m damn mad that the mayor and the city atorney are trying to to stop the school levy,” Steinbrueck told me this morning. He thinks the mayor is fighting the levy because it’s a funding package that competes with Team Nickels’s road maintenance levy. (I agree.) If I-88 passes, Steinbrueck says, “the city must keep faith with the voters who want to tax themselves to fund schools…and pass the money through.”
The Stranger Election Control Board agrees that these school initiatives aren’t pretty (although, neither are schools without money: We rank 46th in the nation in class size). But we had initiative supporters (funded by the WEA) in to our offices last week facing off against Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis. Ultimately, we were swayed by the logic of a Garfield Highschool parent, Beth Sanders, who told us: “It’s a choice between neat public policy and failing schools, and messy public policy and better schools.”
Footnote: City Hall should take over the schools. In our ed board meeting, Ceis kept stressing that he didn’t want to throw city money at the Seattle schools because he thinks the school board is incompetent. This undermined his other argument…namely that it was the state’s responsibility to fund schools. So, Ceis is a-okay with giving state money to incompetent leadership? At that, we pressed Ceis to have the mayor take over the schools. He laughed that off, telling us if he did that we’d probably accuse Team Nickels of conspiring in a big power grab. Actually, he’s wrong… we’re already on record supporting a city takeover.
The L.A. mayor just joined NYC, Chicago, and Boston in a similar takeover.
Wait, how can we afford this and an underwater tunnel that costs ten times more than the green line monorail would have?