I continue to maintain that we should just do away with schoolboards. It's just an elected office that unqualified assholes, use to springboard into more powerful electoral officers because the average voter goes "durhur, but they won the schoolboard election, they can't be that bad, even though I never really pay attention to what that body gets up to and I know lots of others do the same thing." Plus, they almost never go against what the super intendent suggests they often don't know what the state and federal regulations are.
I'd also argue they end up being a huge source of corruption in local governments. No one is paying enough attention to their bullshit. Plus, they also obscure how bad the actual local government is because they end up being a way to muddy the waters on how members of local government are fucking their locality over. "Oh, the school system is complete shit because the schoolboard is bonkers, just ignore the fact that we're the assholes that ensure the schools don't get any money because we can always veto the school budget.
I mean, sure there is an argument to be made that the schoolboards are suppose to make the schools more responsive to the community's needs, but that seems to almost never be the case. More often than not, if they push back against the super intendent or respond to community concerns. Then it's often either in a way that gets them clapped by the state of feds for violating the law or then end up listening to some fringe element of the community and it's usually implementing shit that just creates problems, sometimes putting them in violation of stare and federal regulations.
Our school board is left wing but deeply stupid, which is about as much fun as having Moms For Liberty in charge. I hate it.
Nah left wing stupid is a million times better than right wing stupid because the one thing that defines left wing is empathy
They bankrupted the district, are actively trying to fire hundreds of teachers, cut parapro salaries by a third, and are denying step increases.
Doesn't exactly sound like their following socialist praxis or any left leaning doctrine of economics I'm aware of.
Now if you told me they were limousine liberal types
I mean, it really depends on the reasoning behind their decisions. Being left wing doesn't preclude being stupid or an asshole.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
Seattle/Western Washington is very "left", but we have a huge conflict between really left and what I call "libertarian left" who tend to be left on social issues but are otherwise corpratists/leftists. Even with that we've still got like 35-40% of the state that are conservative.
I continue to maintain that we should just do away with schoolboards. It's just an elected office that unqualified assholes, use to springboard into more powerful electoral officers because the average voter goes "durhur, but they won the schoolboard election, they can't be that bad, even though I never really pay attention to what that body gets up to and I know lots of others do the same thing." Plus, they almost never go against what the super intendent suggests they often don't know what the state and federal regulations are.
I'd also argue they end up being a huge source of corruption in local governments. No one is paying enough attention to their bullshit. Plus, they also obscure how bad the actual local government is because they end up being a way to muddy the waters on how members of local government are fucking their locality over. "Oh, the school system is complete shit because the schoolboard is bonkers, just ignore the fact that we're the assholes that ensure the schools don't get any money because we can always veto the school budget.
I mean, sure there is an argument to be made that the schoolboards are suppose to make the schools more responsive to the community's needs, but that seems to almost never be the case. More often than not, if they push back against the super intendent or respond to community concerns. Then it's often either in a way that gets them clapped by the state of feds for violating the law or then end up listening to some fringe element of the community and it's usually implementing shit that just creates problems, sometimes putting them in violation of stare and federal regulations.
The thing about school boards, too, is that the way they exist currently tends to inherently reinforce that idea that "I went to school so I know about school" that's so prevalent in a lot of school-focused discussions. The idea of a school board has merit, but the reality of most school boards is, at best, fraught.
I mean, parent/community oversite of some aspects of education I suspect is important, but I suspect it's mostly in terms of me seeing attempts to fix things that were laid on schools already unfairly. I'm lucky that one of my school board members for my local district is immensely reasonable, and she has helped my put some pressure on the school district, but it's still pretty minor. In this case, my elementary age kids get 20 minutes to eat lunch and 2x 20 minute recesses and it's ABSOLUTELY not enough. School days area also already probably too long at those grades (Starting at 8:15 am and ending at 2:35 pm PLUS homework). This has only gotten worse as my kid (who we're pretty sure has ADHD and gets distracted from finishing classwork) often (just about every day) loses one of his recesses to doing catch up work, causing his attention pool to be further depleted.
I suspect this is all due to state/etc level testing and needing to get through a set of info, but talking to the school itself hasn't gotten much response but my school board member CCed in the district superintended to the discussion.
That was a rambling way to say "I think school boards can help us resolve problems they probably created themselves"
History once again shows that school boards, in their modern construction, are a thing of desegregation. Created by and used for all of the usual racist reasons.
Are they a good idea in theory? Yes. Having the local community oversee some aspects of education is a necessary part of regular democratic societies.
Have they been a good idea in the US? That's a tougher question to answer. From what I've seen, it's a mixed bag. There's been some good people on them pushing good ideas and good practices forward. There's been some seriously regressive ones as well. The vast majority of them are rubber stamps and tend to be there for the same reason as open mic city council meetings exist. To give the lonely, uniformed, and attention seekers a place to be at the center of it once a month.
It'd be nice to see some improvements to the idea without losing that important democratic aspect.
All opinions are my own and in no way reflect that of my employer.
I continue to maintain that we should just do away with schoolboards. It's just an elected office that unqualified assholes, use to springboard into more powerful electoral officers because the average voter goes "durhur, but they won the schoolboard election, they can't be that bad, even though I never really pay attention to what that body gets up to and I know lots of others do the same thing." Plus, they almost never go against what the super intendent suggests they often don't know what the state and federal regulations are.
I'd also argue they end up being a huge source of corruption in local governments. No one is paying enough attention to their bullshit. Plus, they also obscure how bad the actual local government is because they end up being a way to muddy the waters on how members of local government are fucking their locality over. "Oh, the school system is complete shit because the schoolboard is bonkers, just ignore the fact that we're the assholes that ensure the schools don't get any money because we can always veto the school budget.
I mean, sure there is an argument to be made that the schoolboards are suppose to make the schools more responsive to the community's needs, but that seems to almost never be the case. More often than not, if they push back against the super intendent or respond to community concerns. Then it's often either in a way that gets them clapped by the state of feds for violating the law or then end up listening to some fringe element of the community and it's usually implementing shit that just creates problems, sometimes putting them in violation of stare and federal regulations.
The thing about school boards, too, is that the way they exist currently tends to inherently reinforce that idea that "I went to school so I know about school" that's so prevalent in a lot of school-focused discussions. The idea of a school board has merit, but the reality of most school boards is, at best, fraught.
Especially since it's increasingly "I went to school forty years ago so I know every difference between then and now is the school Doing It Wrong," leading to deciding cursive handwriting is more important than any of the other actual problems currently going on.
Honestly, and I haven't thought this through. Some version of the PTSA would probably be a "better" replacement for the school board and I'm STILL leery of it.
My wife is a PTA member and the group is absolutely unhinged and every problem member that's ever been on the board started with a PTA mom saying "YEAH WELL I'LL JUST RUN AGAINST YOU AND WIN!"
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
edited May 13
I understand the idea behind a school board, it makes sense on a conceptual level: the community wants an active say in the education of their children.
But... But I can't recollect us having that type of hyper-focused community oversight for literally any other aspect of society?
Beyond something like a city council, we don't have separate councils for the police department, fire department, parks & recreation department, ect...
It does make me wonder what greater function the school board performs that a city council couldn't also be doing??
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
edited May 13
I will also add, as someone who has worked for a city's parks & recreation department and a school district (sometimes both at the same time), a school district really acts divorced from the other elements of a town.
The mayor/city-manager gets to run the town but their power ENDS the moment they walk into the district office of a school.
Which feels sort of weird?
And it might be that a school district can sometimes stretch beyond the scope of just one city? The school district I used to work for served students from four different towns??
I understand the idea behind a school board, it makes sense on a conceptual level: the community wants an active say in the education of their children.
But... But I can't recollect us having that type of hyper-focused community oversight for literally any other aspect of society?
Beyond something like a city council, we don't have separate councils for the police department, fire department, parks & recreation department, ect...
It does make me wonder what greater function the school board performs that a city council couldn't also be doing??
I've never seen much purpose to them. They seem one of those weird results of obsession with local governance that is a big deal to certain groups or at certain periods of history. But they seem to mostly exist to let crazy or stupid people have a say in ways that no one is paying attention to.
I will also add, as someone who has worked for a city's parks & recreation department and a school district (sometimes both at the same time), a school district really acts divorced from the other elements of a town.
The mayor/city-manager gets to run the town but their power ENDS the moment they walk into the district office of a school.
Which feels sort of weird?
And it might be that a school district can sometimes stretch beyond the scope of just one city? The school district I used to work for served students from four different towns??
I don't know, this sort of dynamic is weird.
Our school districts are almost all in charge of the whole parish. There are a handful of exceptions where a smaller school district has formed itself around a single town/small group of towns for...reasons..., but the district I work in covers the whole parish.
As a brit, I have never seen the point of a school board (there are ptas in the UK but they have little power). The fact that people who don't even have children attending the schools in question can run is mind boggling to me and sounds open to abuse (cue that infamous article of a school board being hijacked in New York).
I think the latest local school board election we had was the first one where the majority of entries wasn’t the same people running as both Dem and Republican.
NYC has "mayoral control" and.. it's pretty bad. They kind of half-assed it, so there are still boards (PEP and CEC). The PEP is the "school board", but the majority of members are appointed by the mayor (8/15. 5/15 are appointed by borough presidents, and one from the CEC. The Superintendent is the 15th). They are technically "independent", but always vote how the mayor wants. The mayor can also just do whatever for some things. But it adds a layer of extra bureaucracy and slows things down as stuff can only happen at their monthly meetings.
The CEC is the more traditional "school board", and there are 32- one for each sub-district within the larger NYC school system. They can only do very limited things, like individual school rezoning and suggesting some capital funding. They mostly serve to get community feedback to the district superintendent. They are voted on by an odd voting system that's limited to parents. I'm actually on my local CEC, and it mostly just eats up time and does very little. What we can do gets eaten up by..again, bureaucracy and layers and levels of inefficiency, as things move through first, the local district, and then the offices that report to the mayor.
Anytime a CEC does anything, it's usually to yell at the void. CEC2's latest thing was to be loudly transphobic, and the news picked it up as if what they said had any bearing on how NYC schools would be doing anything.
Anyways, I don't think anybody can be normal when it comes to school control.
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
I understand the idea behind a school board, it makes sense on a conceptual level: the community wants an active say in the education of their children.
But... But I can't recollect us having that type of hyper-focused community oversight for literally any other aspect of society?
Beyond something like a city council, we don't have separate councils for the police department, fire department, parks & recreation department, ect...
It does make me wonder what greater function the school board performs that a city council couldn't also be doing??
Schools are typically 70-80% of budget and involve kids, which always gets more attention. There are also typically safety committees (fire+police), planning departments/boards (housing and zoning regs), zoning (zoning enforcement/exceptions), conservation, water boards etc.
It's just that usually no one cares about them. All the ones I listed are just in my small town and 100% volunteer.
I understand the idea behind a school board, it makes sense on a conceptual level: the community wants an active say in the education of their children.
But... But I can't recollect us having that type of hyper-focused community oversight for literally any other aspect of society?
Beyond something like a city council, we don't have separate councils for the police department, fire department, parks & recreation department, ect...
It does make me wonder what greater function the school board performs that a city council couldn't also be doing??
School Boards are one of those quirky American specific things that came about historically as we transitioned from an agricultural society to an industrial society. You started to see more public schools in upper middle class east coast areas in the 1830's, and in 1867 the Department of Education was formally founded.
1890 - Second Morrill Act - Moved land-grant institutions and universities into the scope of the Department of Education.
1917 - Smith-Hughes Act - Adds vocational education
1942 - GI Bill
1946 - George-Barden Act - Added agricultural, industrial, and home economics vocations. This is why you have home ec and shop class in modern schools.
1958 - National Defense Education Act - Response to Sputnik with focus on STEM
1964 - Civil Rights Act
1965 - Elementary and Secondary Education Act - Created Title I and other assistance programs for poor students and to help fund education
Keep in mind that these are all federal. The School Boards often exist to fight these laws or at least cut the legs out from under them. They are the ultimate expression of local government, and unsurprisingly are being used as an avenue to educate children in Republican teachings.
It started in 2012 when a group led by white conservatives claimed that they needed a separate school district, based on claims that crime and poor school quality meant their tax dollars weren’t being used properly. When that effort failed, the right-wing activists tried to form a new city instead. After a long legal battle, the Louisiana Supreme Court finally approved the plan.
The court ruling was denounced by critics in Baton Rouge, who have long warned that the new city could deprive nearby communities of revenue needed to run local services. Opponents are asking the state Supreme Court for another hearing on the matter.
...
And secession plans like these seem to have increased in recent decades.
A conservative-led plan to cleave the largely white neighborhood of Buckhead from Atlanta was quashed last year. And a study found that several successful efforts by largely white areas to form their own independent school districts had worsened school segregation in Alabama, Tennessee and Louisiana.
I'll tell you exactly what it's about (outside the school system).
The white rich parts of Baton Rouge wanted to kill public service programs such as public transportation (buses) because, "they don't need it"
Another thing this will do is absolutely cripple any amount of public school funds for the black neighborhoods. The state wide business development board (not public and whose positions are not voted on by the public) has continued to cut taxes on corporations in the state. I do not believe Exxon Mobil has paid any property taxes in Baton Rouge for 25 years. Guess where that multimillion dollar property is? Next to the black neighborhoods.
Also they had a vote for the new city twice. The first time they tried to grab a much of the southern part of the parish as they could, and the vote failed. The second time they redrew the bounds of the new city to very obviously exclude anywhere that might be even slightly lower income or less white from the previous attempt. That one passed because if I remember right, only people that lived in the proposed boundaries could vote on it.
Also they had a vote for the new city twice. The first time they tried to grab a much of the southern part of the parish as they could, and the vote failed. The second time they redrew the bounds of the new city to very obviously exclude anywhere that might be even slightly lower income or less white from the previous attempt. That one passed because if I remember right, only people that lived in the proposed boundaries could vote on it.
Wait what? That doesn't make sense. To carve out part of a city to make a new city, you only need people in the new one to confirm it, not everyone in the city you're carving out?
The St. George situation is super gross. It is very obviously a ploy to resegregate that is clear just looking at the town boundary lines. My hope is that it gets enmired in lawsuits for ages. And related to crippling school funds in black neighborhoods. A few years ago the high school that will be in St. George was upgraded to a magnet school, pulling it's vertical path into the magnet program as well. And at the same time, the K-8 school that my nephew went to, in a black, working class neighborhood, that had previously had a regular, a Montessori, and a magnet path, was told there would be no more funding for the magnet path. I continue to be infuriated by that.
It wasn’t part of the city itself, it was unincorporated. So it was just the people in x area saying we want to form our own new local government. Now the school district covers the whole parish so that is a different thing. It’s harder to split off from that, but that is the next step.
Otherwise, know several major businesses asked and were incorporated into the city of Baton Rouge itself so they couldn’t be included in the new city in the second attempt. Several didn’t get it done yet so those lawsuits are restarting. But yeah there is a lot of “well I don’t personally use X government service, so how dare they ask me to pay one cent for it” here.
Yeah, it's a little complicated label-wise because it was part of East Baton Rouge Parish and the "Greater Baton Rouge Area", but not necessarily a part of Baton Rouge the city itself even though the school district is the whole parish for the most part. It's ugly, basically.
The St. George situation is super gross. It is very obviously a ploy to resegregate that is clear just looking at the town boundary lines. My hope is that it gets enmired in lawsuits for ages. And related to crippling school funds in black neighborhoods. A few years ago the high school that will be in St. George was upgraded to a magnet school, pulling it's vertical path into the magnet program as well. And at the same time, the K-8 school that my nephew went to, in a black, working class neighborhood, that had previously had a regular, a Montessori, and a magnet path, was told there would be no more funding for the magnet path. I continue to be infuriated by that.
I trust the courts to make sure segregation continues regardless of the strength of the lawsuits filed..
I'll need to see a map of the area. Depending on where the jobs and stores are, the fuckers might attempt the old bullshit model of "we're going to have the lowest taxes we can get away with, while robbing all the out of towners that have to travel to here or through here for work or picking up supplies. Except we'll do it in a way where we can argue that they are legitimate fines for breaking the 'law.'"
Now if they can't get away with that shit, they might be pretty fucked. Given how they'll likely be required to have some base level funding for their public school system, will need to hire police (It's a shit white segregationist city, run by white supremacists, so of course they'll want cops), they'll need to hire firefighters and emergency services. They'll also need departments for handling other things that come with cities, this could include trash collection, handling outdoor spaces, roads (not an issue if they are like VA, where the state handles all the roads, but a huge one if there are local roads they are taking over), water and sewage services and whatever else I'm currently not thinking of.
Now, I will let you guys guess which side of the interstate is where the poorer neighborhoods are located. Bonus points for where the black neighborhoods are.
Here's what East Baton Rouge is still going to pick up the tab on.
"The city of St. George plans to continue using some services provided by East Baton Rouge Parish, according to the plan published online. They include:
East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office (criminal and civil services).
19th Judicial District Court.
Emergency Medical Services.
Alcohol Beverage Control.
Mosquito and Rodent Control.
Animal Control.
BREC.
East Baton Rouge Parish Library control.
Garbage/trash collection."
I believe two of those weird cutouts are the Mall of Louisiana and a department store lot with a lowes.
Another key note is that they want to grab the corporate towers (commercial real estate) that are on Essen Lane between I-10 and I-12. A lot of local business headquarters/ office space are in there.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Is the orange the new "city"? How does it not encompass everything inside it's borders? It's such transparent idiocy.
Yes, yes, it is.
There's also at least one carveout to exclude an apartment complex. There used to be more, but I think they got struck down because they were, shockingly, too transparent.
There's supposed to be a "transition district" going into place, but I don't lay high odds on many of those services ever actually transitioning from EBR to St. George. The new city probably does have the tax base for it, but it also has a high percentage of "taxes are theft" base so....
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I'd also argue they end up being a huge source of corruption in local governments. No one is paying enough attention to their bullshit. Plus, they also obscure how bad the actual local government is because they end up being a way to muddy the waters on how members of local government are fucking their locality over. "Oh, the school system is complete shit because the schoolboard is bonkers, just ignore the fact that we're the assholes that ensure the schools don't get any money because we can always veto the school budget.
I mean, sure there is an argument to be made that the schoolboards are suppose to make the schools more responsive to the community's needs, but that seems to almost never be the case. More often than not, if they push back against the super intendent or respond to community concerns. Then it's often either in a way that gets them clapped by the state of feds for violating the law or then end up listening to some fringe element of the community and it's usually implementing shit that just creates problems, sometimes putting them in violation of stare and federal regulations.
Doesn't exactly sound like their following socialist praxis or any left leaning doctrine of economics I'm aware of.
Now if you told me they were limousine liberal types
I mean, it really depends on the reasoning behind their decisions. Being left wing doesn't preclude being stupid or an asshole.
Or being easily grifted.
The thing about school boards, too, is that the way they exist currently tends to inherently reinforce that idea that "I went to school so I know about school" that's so prevalent in a lot of school-focused discussions. The idea of a school board has merit, but the reality of most school boards is, at best, fraught.
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I suspect this is all due to state/etc level testing and needing to get through a set of info, but talking to the school itself hasn't gotten much response but my school board member CCed in the district superintended to the discussion.
That was a rambling way to say "I think school boards can help us resolve problems they probably created themselves"
Are they a good idea in theory? Yes. Having the local community oversee some aspects of education is a necessary part of regular democratic societies.
Have they been a good idea in the US? That's a tougher question to answer. From what I've seen, it's a mixed bag. There's been some good people on them pushing good ideas and good practices forward. There's been some seriously regressive ones as well. The vast majority of them are rubber stamps and tend to be there for the same reason as open mic city council meetings exist. To give the lonely, uniformed, and attention seekers a place to be at the center of it once a month.
It'd be nice to see some improvements to the idea without losing that important democratic aspect.
Especially since it's increasingly "I went to school forty years ago so I know every difference between then and now is the school Doing It Wrong," leading to deciding cursive handwriting is more important than any of the other actual problems currently going on.
But... But I can't recollect us having that type of hyper-focused community oversight for literally any other aspect of society?
Beyond something like a city council, we don't have separate councils for the police department, fire department, parks & recreation department, ect...
It does make me wonder what greater function the school board performs that a city council couldn't also be doing??
The mayor/city-manager gets to run the town but their power ENDS the moment they walk into the district office of a school.
Which feels sort of weird?
And it might be that a school district can sometimes stretch beyond the scope of just one city? The school district I used to work for served students from four different towns??
I don't know, this sort of dynamic is weird.
I've never seen much purpose to them. They seem one of those weird results of obsession with local governance that is a big deal to certain groups or at certain periods of history. But they seem to mostly exist to let crazy or stupid people have a say in ways that no one is paying attention to.
Our school districts are almost all in charge of the whole parish. There are a handful of exceptions where a smaller school district has formed itself around a single town/small group of towns for...reasons..., but the district I work in covers the whole parish.
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The CEC is the more traditional "school board", and there are 32- one for each sub-district within the larger NYC school system. They can only do very limited things, like individual school rezoning and suggesting some capital funding. They mostly serve to get community feedback to the district superintendent. They are voted on by an odd voting system that's limited to parents. I'm actually on my local CEC, and it mostly just eats up time and does very little. What we can do gets eaten up by..again, bureaucracy and layers and levels of inefficiency, as things move through first, the local district, and then the offices that report to the mayor.
Anytime a CEC does anything, it's usually to yell at the void. CEC2's latest thing was to be loudly transphobic, and the news picked it up as if what they said had any bearing on how NYC schools would be doing anything.
Anyways, I don't think anybody can be normal when it comes to school control.
Schools are typically 70-80% of budget and involve kids, which always gets more attention. There are also typically safety committees (fire+police), planning departments/boards (housing and zoning regs), zoning (zoning enforcement/exceptions), conservation, water boards etc.
It's just that usually no one cares about them. All the ones I listed are just in my small town and 100% volunteer.
School Boards are one of those quirky American specific things that came about historically as we transitioned from an agricultural society to an industrial society. You started to see more public schools in upper middle class east coast areas in the 1830's, and in 1867 the Department of Education was formally founded.
1890 - Second Morrill Act - Moved land-grant institutions and universities into the scope of the Department of Education.
1917 - Smith-Hughes Act - Adds vocational education
1942 - GI Bill
1946 - George-Barden Act - Added agricultural, industrial, and home economics vocations. This is why you have home ec and shop class in modern schools.
1958 - National Defense Education Act - Response to Sputnik with focus on STEM
1964 - Civil Rights Act
1965 - Elementary and Secondary Education Act - Created Title I and other assistance programs for poor students and to help fund education
Keep in mind that these are all federal. The School Boards often exist to fight these laws or at least cut the legs out from under them. They are the ultimate expression of local government, and unsurprisingly are being used as an avenue to educate children in Republican teachings.
A collection of white residents in Baton Rouge have won a case in LA Supreme court to create a new city St. George separating them from the poorer blacker parts of the city.
Typically high density urban areas fund affluent suburbs from a tax base perspective.
The white rich parts of Baton Rouge wanted to kill public service programs such as public transportation (buses) because, "they don't need it"
Another thing this will do is absolutely cripple any amount of public school funds for the black neighborhoods. The state wide business development board (not public and whose positions are not voted on by the public) has continued to cut taxes on corporations in the state. I do not believe Exxon Mobil has paid any property taxes in Baton Rouge for 25 years. Guess where that multimillion dollar property is? Next to the black neighborhoods.
Wait what? That doesn't make sense. To carve out part of a city to make a new city, you only need people in the new one to confirm it, not everyone in the city you're carving out?
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Otherwise, know several major businesses asked and were incorporated into the city of Baton Rouge itself so they couldn’t be included in the new city in the second attempt. Several didn’t get it done yet so those lawsuits are restarting. But yeah there is a lot of “well I don’t personally use X government service, so how dare they ask me to pay one cent for it” here.
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I trust the courts to make sure segregation continues regardless of the strength of the lawsuits filed..
Now if they can't get away with that shit, they might be pretty fucked. Given how they'll likely be required to have some base level funding for their public school system, will need to hire police (It's a shit white segregationist city, run by white supremacists, so of course they'll want cops), they'll need to hire firefighters and emergency services. They'll also need departments for handling other things that come with cities, this could include trash collection, handling outdoor spaces, roads (not an issue if they are like VA, where the state handles all the roads, but a huge one if there are local roads they are taking over), water and sewage services and whatever else I'm currently not thinking of.
Can you see that?
Now, I will let you guys guess which side of the interstate is where the poorer neighborhoods are located. Bonus points for where the black neighborhoods are.
https://www.brproud.com/news/local-news/east-baton-rouge-parish/what-you-need-to-know-about-st-george-new-louisiana-city-will-be-in-east-baton-rouge-parish/
Oh cool there's more. They plan to fund the parish with a 2% sales tax.
Here's what East Baton Rouge is still going to pick up the tab on.
"The city of St. George plans to continue using some services provided by East Baton Rouge Parish, according to the plan published online. They include:
East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office (criminal and civil services).
19th Judicial District Court.
Emergency Medical Services.
Alcohol Beverage Control.
Mosquito and Rodent Control.
Animal Control.
BREC.
East Baton Rouge Parish Library control.
Garbage/trash collection."
Another key note is that they want to grab the corporate towers (commercial real estate) that are on Essen Lane between I-10 and I-12. A lot of local business headquarters/ office space are in there.
Looks like a creek
Yes, yes, it is.
There's also at least one carveout to exclude an apartment complex. There used to be more, but I think they got struck down because they were, shockingly, too transparent.
There's supposed to be a "transition district" going into place, but I don't lay high odds on many of those services ever actually transitioning from EBR to St. George. The new city probably does have the tax base for it, but it also has a high percentage of "taxes are theft" base so....
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