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An Argument For Empty Nesters

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By TOM JACKSON

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: October 24, 2008

DADE CITY - The heart of the campaign season brings lots of questions, some terrific, some irrelevant, most of them pertaining to the issues at hand. Consider the race for Pasco County schools superintendent, in which two bright, accomplished and politically savvy candidates are in a showdown over nothing less than the trajectory of public education in Florida's 11th-largest school district.

Having become the United States of Instant Gratification, today's voters tend to dismiss candidates' governing philosophy in favor of their solutions for the Current Mess We're In. If this is like hiring a handyman to repair a plugged drain while failing to account for the design flaw that caused the backup, well, never mind.

Still, failure to ascertain and understand governing philosophy does not diminish its importance because it is the compass by which the eventual winner will be guided when the current collection of crises is replaced by others - others precipitated, the track record suggests, by the winner's unexamined governing philosophy.

So it was the other night that, at a candidates forum sponsored by central and east Pasco chambers of commerce, a form of that most revealing question barged in through the side door, and both schools Superintendent Heather Fiorentino and Democratic nominee Steve Donaldson fumbled.

That Scary, Hissing Sound

The inquiry: What do you tell empty nesters and childless property owners when they complain about their ad valorem taxes going to schools that they no longer use, or never used?

The subject is not new, nor should it have been unanticipated. But both recoiled as though they'd pulled the lid off a basket of cobras.

Donaldson's reply was esoteric and off-topic, something about how it's the superintendent's job to make sure that the budget is well-managed, waste is minimized and bang-for-the-buck happens at every turn. This is an admirable, if boilerplate, response to some question, if not the question posed.

Fiorentino, approaching whiny, was no better, faulting the legislature for the tax arrangement and adding a complaint about local districts shouldering more than 50 percent of the burden for the first time.

Ladies and gentlemen, your candidates for Pasco superintendent of schools. C'mon, guys, how hard can this be? Anyone seeking to become Pasco's top educator ought to draw from a quiver bristling with cogent arguments.

It's The Infrastructure, Stupid

Here's one: Because the benefits of a knowledgeable population accrue to the nation as a whole, we long ago assumed the obligation of education as fundamental to America's well-being. Consider it part of the infrastructure, like bridges and airports and parks and prisons; with each, the promotion of the general welfare is obvious, whether any particular taxpayer, or class of taxpayer, directly utilizes them.

And furthermore: Childless adults and empty nesters visit doctors, hire accountants, retain lawyers, employ carpenters and count on routine mail delivery. They dine out, shop where goods are logically displayed and rely on the precision of traffic signals.

All these activities and countless others are performed, to an overwhelming extent, by people who attended public schools. So don't imagine, because you never had kids, or your kids are grown and gone, that you aren't receiving value from your school-tax dollars every day.

But why property taxes? Because good neighborhood schools historically promote increases in property values, spreading wealth among homeowners irrespective of their family arrangement.

You would expect such an argument would flow freely from a candidate for superintendent. That neither made it suggests a shared shallowness, a worrisome adherence to shapeless pragmatism that could prevent each from seeing the grandeur of the forest for the obstruction of the trees.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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