Summary of the February 2016 Pickens County school board meeting ...

I want to thank all those from the Conservatives of the Upstate for being present last night.  Some people do not notice but AP Laws comes to a lot of these meetings to stand up in back of us who speak.  There were a number of parents that passionately spoke about not closing the three Northern Schools.  What I cannot to the life of me understand is that I laid out the solution in front of them last night and they refuse to hear it.  Parents cannot understand accounting 101 and the South Carolina Law that governs the accounting.  I am going to try and lay it out for you here again. Every year a millage rate is set based on a regulated budget.  The Auditor of the county is supposed to make this decision.  He may listen to the representative of the School Board, the County Council, the cities, towns, and Tri-County Tech, but the decision for how much millage is the AUDITOR'S responsibility.  He also sets the collectability, which in Pickens County is somewhat over 100% because if you don't pay your taxes they take your property, and if you are late they charge a fee.  This is not the only thing the AUDITOR does. He is responsible for adjusting millage after reassessment.  Millage rates could go up, but history shows us that most of the time they go down.  None of the collecting entities have the right to benefit from the reassessment, yet over the years there has been a great influx of revenue after reassessment. If millage is set too high which has been the case this year and has been case every year since inception.  The overage is supposed to be refunded to the Tax Payers either as a credit or in cash at the end of the year.  The same with the amount collectable.  If the % is low the entities (School Board,etc) collects too much and is supposed to refund the money or credit to the Taxpayers. These procedures are covered in 12-43-285.  I am told that the School Board attorney is telling the Board to violate the laws of this state.  So unless we can get a ground swell of people from this area to sue the Board we are going to be stuck with loss of 200 million dollars in over-collections by cities, towns, School board, County Council, and Tri-County Tech. We have attorney's that are hired by the school board using our money that are going to be responsible for closing our schools.  It is a violation of a number of laws that you can look up:SC Constitution Article 11 Section 3,  Article 10 Section 5 and 15 and 12-43-285