No Easy Answer

A letter to the editor in the local newspaper writes, "I propose that the entire $5 million be given to the Lesterville School District. Let the school district invest the money so as to end its Ameren tax dependency."

The sad fact is it would take about $12 million invested to raise the same money as Ameren pays in property taxes to the Lesterville school. Lesterville is part of the law suit against the state over inequity in school funding. I understand the arugment that if you live in the city and want you childs school to have a good foreign language and science program that your taxes ought to provide for that and not go to another school district. I also understand the statement that rural property is not assesed at the proper or equal amount. This may be true for agricultural or forest land, but as someone that owns a home in Lesterville and Springfield I can tell you that my taxes are very similiar in both cities.

The problem with taxing forest land is the trees in Reynolds County are only harvested every 25 years. The family that owns Wilderness Lodge is among the largest owners of local forest land. My neighbors to the south are forest land owners from Cape Girardeau and they also own thousands of acres. Both of these families do a very good job when they harvest the trees, they don't clear cut and they don't harvest for the chip mills. The largest land owners in Reynolds County are the state (Conservation and DNR) and the feds (National Forest and Corps of Engineers). They don't pay property taxes, but they do have some sort of payment to local schools.

I would really love to know which state has the best schools and the best system of supporting them. Iowa was a very different state from Missouri. There seemed to be a great deal of pride in education in Iowa, but I left 23+ years ago and I don't know what their problems are now. In the time I have lived in Missouri it has seemed that Gov. Carnahan was the only official to understand the problem, even if he didn't solve it. But then he was from rural Missouri.
There are no easy answers.