What with early voting, it’s about time for a review of SPLOST. Putting an E in front of it does not change a thing.

First of all, the SPLOST is not based on need. The FCBOE did not have a budget need for $115 million. SPLOST is actually a two-step process. First, it is determined how much money a SPLOST would pull in. In this case it is $115 million. Step 2: Create a way to spend it all.

Would that not be a cool thing to be able to do? It would be no problem at all to spend $115 million. This is really a lot like playing the lottery. Just as you would buy a lottery ticket and hope for big bucks, the FCBOE puts this SPLOST on the ballot and hopes for the same.

In the last 10 years the FCBOE has twice tried to hit the lottery in the name of building schools. Each time the amount they would have received far exceeded the cost of building the schools they proposed.

After losing each of those SPLOSTs, the FCBOE put bond referendums only for the bricks and mortar costs on subsequent ballots and they passed.

A SPLOST really hits the people who can least afford it the hardest: poor people and those retired folks living on a fixed income.

We do not pay state tax on food, only local taxes. In other words, another SPLOST (we are already paying an extra penny sales tax for road “needs” in Fayette County) would raise the cost of our most basic need, groceries.

If you think that there are no poor people in Fayette County, know that 59.4 percent of Fayette County students are eligible for free or reduced price lunches.

We are in very rough economic times, and no one but the very rich can afford to pay more for food and everything else.

Also, when you are paying more for everything, you are forced to buy less. In this case, you will have 1 percent less to spend on other things, which affects businesses because of what they will not be able to sell to you. And when businesses decline, unemployment increases. There is a domino effect.

The FCBOE wants you to think that much of this tax will be paid by people from other counties. If it were a significant amount, we would have been given a percentage. We have not. We all know that we spend most of our money here and that we will pay most of the $115 million.

A large factor here is government spending. Every single facet of government is screaming for more money. It is past the time that we should have said, “No,” but today is not a bad day to finally say it.

This is especially true with public education, where their mantra is “more money is never enough.” There is not a correlation between money spent and results. Fayette County (2007) spent $8,705.50 per student, while Washington, D.C., will spend $24,600 per student this year to achieve dismal results.

My family and I cannot spend more than we earn. The school district should have to live on a budget as well. We will pay $7,605.25 for property taxes on Nov. 15. A staggering $5,196.94 goes to the FCBOE.

Raise your hand if you are ready to take a 1 percent cut in your spending because the FCBOE cannot live within its means.

If you did not raise your hand, you must vote “no” on the E-SPLOST. And spread the word.

Victoria Webster

Peachtree City, Ga.