(Sibley)– Governor Tom Vilsack made the rounds in northwest Iowa again today after visiting places like Sioux Center yesterday.
The Governor was in Sibley this morning and Spencer this afternoon. He held “Community Conversations” in each city and presided over a ribbon cutting of Spencer’s “East Beltway Project”…an easterly bypass of the city that runs along a county road two miles east of the North “Y” south to Highway 18.
The local option sales tax for schools was one of many issues Vilsack addressed. He agrees with critics who say the present system is unfair to areas that haven’t been able to pass the tax. He says a component of the Vision Iowa Program is intended to help those schools. Vilsack says they can apply for 50 million dollars in funding that’s been set aside in the program specifically for schools. Vilsack said the state gets another 10 million annually from the federal government to help schools with construction. None-the-less, Vilsack said he expects some lawmakers will try to address the matter by pushing to shift funding for schools from property taxes to sales taxes. He said he’s concerned about that because Iowa’s sales tax is based on a 1950’s economy. And Vilsack says a long term reliance on sales tax receipts can be dangerous because they tend to fluctuate so much.
