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Tyler Johnson, [email protected]
ROCK SPRINGS, WYOMING (December 2, 2020) – The Sweetwater County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees tabled the discussion of submitting a letter to Wyoming legislators on 10% cuts to its budget in a special meeting on Wednesday.
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The drafted letter in which was written based on recommendations from a Cost Savings Task Force resulted in a 1% sales tax increase and the elimination of one, if not multiple, elementary schools in the district.
Some of the other items mentioned in the School Finance Recalibration letter included pay-to-play for athletics and activities, early retirement incentives, limited increases to class size and a four-day school week.
Wyoming Representative Clark Stith of House District 48, who served on the Cost Savings Task Force, commented via letter during the meeting that “it is disappointing to see the work of the Cost Savings Task Force reduced to a recommendation to raise taxes,” adding that the draft letter proposes zero cuts to Sweetwater County School District No. 1’s central administration
Making cuts to the central administration’s staff was one of the 83 items the Cost Savings Task Force recommended.
Max Mickelson, the Board of Trustees clerk, said that Wyoming has the lowest tax structure in all of the 50 states, yet businesses still won’t come or are fleeing the state. He talked about how he hears people speak that low taxes drive businesses to a community.
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“Where are they?” he asked, using the state of Kansas as an example where they made a number of tax cuts, but businesses fled because the tax cuts resulted in a poor infrastructure.
“It is dishonest and reckless to continue to the false narrative any tax is bad,” Mickelson said, adding that he’s “tired of people living for ideology and not reality.”
Matthew Jackman, treasurer on the Board of Trustees, said that he was in-favor of the tax increase, but that he doesn’t like how the letter was written as a whole because it doesn’t show what the state senate is looking for.
The next scheduled board meeting is Monday, Dec. 14, and will include an update on the rewritten later before the board meets again to approve the submission of the letter
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