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@davebarry: While I do respect your comments and I do not disagree regarding school consolidation, I have to take you to task for spreading misinformation regarding the school budget.

Number 1: You state that the school budget goes up each year is false. The fiscal 2016 overall school budget including funding from federal, state and local tax dollars is equal to the 2009 school budget at $159.5 million. Looking at local tax dollars that fund the school budget shows that schools have been level funded for practically 5 years at $119.5 million.

Number 2: You state that 60% of more of our tax dollars is allocated to the school budget. That statement would be true if you were referring to funding a decade ago. Take a look at your fourth quarter property tax bill and you will see that schools receive about 52% of total local tax dollars while the city receives 48%.

To put this dramatic shift into prospective you need to look at how much new tax dollars has gone to the city and school budgets over the last decade. The city budget has received approximately $38.5 million of new tax dollars while schools have received $6.4 million. That represents a 60% increase in funding to the city budget and a 5.6% to schools.

Looking at it another way for every new tax dollar collected, 85 cents went to the city budget and 15 cents went to the schools.

The bottom line is that record city spending is the reason why property taxes increase each year. If you want tax relief its time you start pointing figures at the Mayor and the City Council, not the School Department.