Maury County Mayhem

Schools are now back in session after a two week fall break and a power struggle between the Maury County Commission and the Maury County School Board. Ostensibly to show their disapproval at poor performance, the commission seemed to cater to the constituents with kids in Columbia Academy and those older residents without students currently enrolled who wanted to reduce funding. The current budget requires no tax increase and was simply increased by using the schools' own rainy day funds. The county commissioners failed to realize that there is a major cost associated with new growth. You can not approve any and every residential development without thought to how much it will cost the county to educate the students that move in. Both the planning commission and the county commission are charmed by the short term cash that developers throw in their face to gain approval, but then balk when that doesn't come close to covering the burdens to local government of the development. I wonder how many members of the county commission that voted against the school budget were also in favor of some of the poorly planned, poorly built and very densely populated projects that have gone up around the county.