Local voters demand school change
Beaufort County residents put in motion Tuesday some much-needed local change.
Voters went to the polls en masse to demand something better from the Beaufort County School District. The school board will now have two new members who were rightfully aghast at Superintendent Jeff Moss’ nepotism scandal and the board’s refusal to rebuff it.
Christina Gwozdz of Bluffton, a medical doctor and wife of a doctor who sent their children from our public schools to the Ivy Leagues, and Patricia Felton-Montgomery, with both a doctorate and a career in public education, represent two giant steps in the right direction.
That is progress. Major progress. No community can afford to lose the public’s support of the public schools, and this community has a long way to go to right recent wrongs. Clearly, the electorate cried out for change, with Moss champion Paul Roth of Sun City coming in third in a two-person race (one candidate on the ballot had dropped out of the race).
Another vote on Tuesday shows how much work lies ahead for the school district. Voters resoundingly defeated its preposterous referendum to raise the local sales tax by 1 percentage point for 10 years to entrust it with more than $300 million.
We beg the school board not to miss this splash of reality from the public. This remains a fast-growing county, and one portion of the county especially — Bluffton — is going to need new schools in the future.
But as Beaufort County learned, the sales tax may not be the best way to address capital needs.
The county’s much more reasonable $120 million capital projects list to be funded by a 1 percent sales tax over four years also went down in flames.
Local leaders should never return to the voters with two separate sales tax hikes on the same ballot. That was foolish from the start, and it no doubt hurt both proposals.
Beaufort County refined its request a great deal from one so bloated two years ago that County Council did not even place it on the ballot.
But now the county is getting another lesson: Refine the capital projects list even more, or consider a different way to fund capital projects. A temporary sales tax increase worked well to widen S.C. 170 between Sun City and Beaufort a number of years ago. It was not an easy sell, but that request targeted a single project that was clearly needed and clearly improved the entire county.
Neither the school district nor the county made a good case that its projects were truly dire needs.
Today’s sales-tax approach is flawed from the outset. It demands each municipality to rather quickly put forth a wish list, and the public sees right through the results. The referendum turned down this week included $6.2 million for an arts venue for Hilton Head that had not been planned or approved.
Plenty of good was on the list, but this approach forces cities to come up with things just to come up with things. And the theory of putting a chicken in every pot — or some goodies for most communities countywide — did not work.
The county has said how it will fund some of its needs on the list without using the failed sales tax. Now it is up to the municipalities to show how they will fund their true needs, such as paving 21 dirt roads outside the gated communities of Hilton Head.
Town Council on Hilton Head saw the re-election of three incumbents, and voters in Beaufort opted for a collegial City Council by re-electing Mike McFee and choosing political newcomer Nan Sutton over the cage-rattling former mayor David Taub.
Voters expressed confidence in the jobs state Reps. Shannon Erickson of Beaufort and Bill Herbkersman of Bluffton are doing by choosing these incumbents over newcomers.
We all should be heartened by the strong voter turnout, which approached 70 percent in this presidential election year.
The people used the ballot box, some of them after hour-plus waits in line, to make strong and appreciated demands for change.
This story was originally published November 10, 2016 at 7:15 AM with the headline "Local voters demand school change."