Suburbs

This is the time of year news out of the suburbs can be both important but also be stories filled with a lot of calculations, math, numbers and percentages.

Every spring, suburban cities go through the budgets, the financial plans for the new fiscal year that starts July 1. And accompanying that consideration is the property tax rate set by the six suburbs in Shelby County.

My standard line since college was that the adviser told me if I majored in journalism, I could take philosophy as a requirement rather than math.

I couldn’t wait to be either a philosopher or journalist.

Anyway, that explains my avoidance of numbers and ciphering and figurin’.

But budgets are a core necessity of running a city, and also the reason each government spends months putting together the blueprint before the matter reaches the individual governing bodies.

There was a time when this was a bit simpler. Tax rates were less. People’s main concerns were whether the trash would be picked up and if the first responders would respond when beckoned for crime or emergency.

Certainly, there were plenty of other aspects to consider: Sewer service, street paving, drainage and parks. Paying for the city experts to keep things running smoothly within the budget. Maintaining zoning and code enforcement.

But as long as the city answered the call and the property tax remained in a manageable range, residents were generally satisfied with things. Public hearings accompanying the budget and tax rate sometimes went quietly through May and June.

Things have changed since then. One major factor is the municipal school districts that emerged. Funding education is a huge expense, not to mention just keeping pace with aging buildings. Some districts have built new schools. Others have expanded their facilities. There are new decisions to be made outside the running of the city.

Schools become a major factor.

And a major expense.

Back when the surrounding cities were making a pitch for their own school systems, opponents warned the suburbs to consider the cost of such an effort. Some even said the districts wouldn’t be able to make it, that the cost would finally catch up to them and some would start cutting corners or not fund the district to keep pace with others.

Or slough off as an aging population in the cities lost interest in education value when their children were no longer students.

This week, reporters Abigail Warren and Michael Waddell may have touched on that with a story about decreasing enrollment. The culprit wasn’t necessarily vouchers. No, it seems a decrease in birth rates has led to more seniors graduating than kindergarteners entering school.

Then there is the brewing question of whether Germantown is providing the appropriate funding to its municipal school district, the percentage included in the referendum that established the city systems.

The separate school district budgets just add to all the debates of what programs and services deserve what share of the revenues that come to the cities.

The question, I suppose, is whether municipalities are willing to maintain the level of education they are providing or slip slightly into the prediction of those who said they eventually would struggle to make it work. -Suburbs Editor, Clay Bailey

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