The Danville Register & Bee says that Danville Public Schools new school requests are “expected to come up for discussion” at Tuesday night’s Danville City Council meeting. That’s wrong, and good reporting would have discovered that. Oh yeah, delinquent tax fees aren’t going up either.
School budget, fee and rate increases up for Danville City Council review
(Register & Bee article, paywall may apply unless you break through it)
Here’s the first RottenReporting part of the article. Let’s start with this quote from the article.
…raising delinquent real estate tax filings from $28.75 to $60
Judges?
The fee increase will be only for companies that request that a delinquent real estate electronic file be created and sent to them. Here’s the official write-up on that fee increase from the city…
Delinquent Real Estate File – Periodically, the Information Technology Department receives requests from financial corporations for delinquent real estate information in electronic format. For several years now, IT staff has been producing a monthly text file for CoreLogic at a rate of $28.78 per month. This fee was based on one staff member’s hourly rate from years ago. IT staff and Finance staff are recommending an increase in the rate to $60 per file. As with the Land Book, the production of the delinquent tax file not only requires the physical task of producing the file, but also communications and coordination with the requestor.
So no, this doesn’t apply to somebody who’s real estate taxes go delinquent. Gah.
Here’s the second RottenReporting part of the article…
Two of the projects are expected to come up for discussion: new metal roofs for Schoolfield Elementary and Westwood Middle schools.
Several council members have said that while metal roofs can last up to 50 years, it would cost about $2 million to put them on these schools. Shingle roofs — which have an average life of 25-30 years would cost about half that.
It’s not going to come up for discussion. The school board already agreed to the shingle roof idea at Thursday night’s meeting. Denice could have read that here at SouthsideCentral. Maybe she’s not the biggest fan of our content. Maybe. Well, she could have reviewed the agenda and outcomes from Thursday night’s school board meeting that you can find at this link. It reads…
To modify prior request submitted to City Council in the amount of $2.620 million to provide procurement of shingle roof versus metal roof with the School Board retaining authority to apply the difference of funds to other capital improvement projects as determined by the Board.
Motion by Steven P Gould, second by Renee Hughes.
Final Resolution: Motion Approved
Yes: Cheryl L Bryant, Philip Campbell, Sharon Dones, Steven P Gould, Terri H Hall, Renee Hughes, Edward C Polhamus Jr
That’s pretty clear. Or, she could have read the Register & Bee’s own article about Thursday’s school board meeting. Except that the Register & Bee didn’t even have a reporter at the meeting. Whoops.
Completely misreading and misinterpreting a rather simple fee increase paragraph? Not keeping up with current millions of dollars budget events?
That’s RottenReporting.
metal roofs put on trailers outside Forest Hills School. Bet the roof last longer than those make shift rooms. Who made that call??? Must of had plenty of money to spend then!!!
I saw the notices about rate increases which were posted in the R&B. The one for the change in the charge for delinquent tax file was listed. The way it is written in the article is obviously wrong. I guess newspaper staff do not read the notices that our City government post in the R&B for citizens to comment on? There is also one in there regarding increases in some utilities….like….wastewater and gas. Regarding schools, It is a shame that no one had the foresight to put a metal roof on Schoolfield Elem when it was built. I certainly hope that Council is aware of long range plans for buildings and needs for local schools. Will other schools need to be closed? Should we return to one high school? And so on. I hope that our schoolboard has some plans in place for the near future and that they are in a proactive versus reactive mode. I am disappointed that some members of the board chose to pass a budget that encompasses leftover funds. They must learn to live within their means and the time to start that is now. I applaud those who voted against the budget for this reason.