- Cape Rolling Out Bloomfield Road Art Trail (8/21/19)1
- Donors Pledge Almost Two Grand To Replace SEMO's Possibly Sentient ‘Gum Tree' (8/16/18)
- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
Population Belch Requires $15M for Cape High School?
I read in the Southeast Missourian last week that some of the Cape Girardeau Public School buildings have problems and the district needs to spend money to fix those problems.
They need to spend a lot of money. About forty million dollars is their current estimate.
I hate reading reports like that. They always seem to precede my taxes going up.
Over a third of the forty million is slated for Cape Central High School. You know, the Cape Central High School that is just seven years old. According to that school's principal they were "out of space" when it opened in September 2002.
I found this statement very interesting. I didn't realize that the city of Cape had had a population explosion. Just to check, I found the following at the Census Bureau website for the city of Cape Girardeau:
Total Population
2008: 37,332 (estimate)
2000: 35,349
1990: 34,438
1980: 34,361
That's not what I would call an explosion. That's only about an 8.6% increase in 28 years. It's more like a population belch and not a very loud one at that. It's the kind of belch where you say, "Excuse me." and the person closest to you asks "Why?"
So I thought maybe the school age portion of our population -- those from five to 17 -- had increased dramatically and found these census figures for Cape:
Population Between 5 and 17
2008: 5,144 (estimate)
2000: 5,361
1990: 5,222
1980: 5,462
No explosion there either. It looks to me like our school age population is what demographers would call "flat" and has been for at least the last 30 years.
So that I have this issue straight in my head, let me recap.
The school district approved spending $17.4 million in 2001 for a new high school that is eleven percent bigger than the old one, but the administration now says it was too small the day it opened even though the district has not experienced any significant growth since at least 1980.
If this is truly the case, then it looks to me like someone did some awfully poor planning back when the high school on Silver Springs Road was built. There's no good reason for the school not being big enough.
And now the district wants to spend close to $15 million just for projects at the high school. They want to add 16 classrooms, a 750-seat auditorium and an event complex increasing the school's size by about 25%.
The superintendent of the Cape Girardeau school district claims they can move forward with a bond issue as high as $43 million without increasing the tax rate.
Perhaps, that is true. The current property tax rate in Cape is $4.16 for every hundred dollars of assessed valuation. It includes 56 cents approved by voters a decade ago that has partially been used to pay off the bonds issued for our too-small high school. I suspect if the latest bond issue comes to pass that we will be asked to continue this tax.
Perhaps my property taxes won't technically go up if this bond issue is put before the voters and passes, but it would sure be nice if they actually went down for a change.
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