Lummi Island and the Whatcom County Ferry are in the news yet again.
Click here for the most recent story from the Herald Politics Blog.
Click here for the most recent post from the Lummi Island Ferry Forum.
This article is about tax fairness... as I perceive it, anyway.
The County is on the record as entertaining the notion of making Lummi Island into its own ferry taxing district. This is presented as fair.
It isn't.
This is actually profoundly unfair, and may violate the State Constitution.
There are two sorts of persons who ride the ferry without paying a fare: Members of the Lummi Nation, and Lummi Island kids who go to school off island.
Members of the Lummi Nation who ride the ferry are beyond the scope of this post.
It is the school age kids who ride the ferry to get to school that are the focus of this post.
In regards to those who believe that the Lummi Island residents should have to pay the price of the Lummi Island ferry on their own, I respond as follows: "Fine. After a school is built on Lummi Island."
That's right, a school. At the expense of at least the entire school district. (Hello, Ferndale. I'm talking to you.)
See, the money that the Ferry loses on each school kid who rides the ferry to get to public school is money that has to be recovered by other means. The reason that the Ferry has to let kids ride the ferry to get to school without paying a fare is because of the mandate that the kid has to go to school. And there are no schools on Lummi Island.
Asking the Lummi Island residents to pay to get their kids off the island to go to public school is like asking residents who live a long way from the school house to pay for the extra fuel required to get buses to their houses. That's not how it works. The way it works is that all kids and parents get the same standard of care within the school district.
The Lummi Island residents are a part of School District #502. The Ferndale School District, as mentioned above.
I believe this school district owes the Lummi Island residents the same duty of care as they owe any other resident living in this same district. The notion that the residents on Lummi Island should have to pay extra just to get their kids to the same schools as the rest of the kids in district #502 is absurd on its face, and likely a violation of the State Constitution regarding education.
So, fairness dictates at least two general options for the citizens in school district #502:
Option 1: Cover the cost of building a school on Lummi Island
Option 2: Cover the cost of getting Lummi Island school kids off island.
I don't know which would ultimately end up being the more expensive solution, but I suspect it would be option number one.
If there were a school on Lummi Island, then there would be no reason to allow school age kids to ride the ferry without paying a fare. The kids wouldn't need to leave the island just to get an education, like they do now. It would be much less expensive to have a relatively small number of school faculty commute to Lummi Island than it would be to have the relatively large number of the student body commute from Lummi Island. Of course, building a school on Lummi Island promises to be anything but cheap.
I prefer Option 3, myself...
The whole County pays for the cost of getting those kids off island.
But I doubt that my view will enjoy enough popular support to be enacted by the County, so I recommend that the County get its head around the actual minimum size and scope of a ferry taxing district. So long as the school kids on Lummi Island have to get off the island to go to school, then the ferry taxing district has to encompass the entire school district that services Lummi Island school kids.
Either Ferndale is going to end up covering the cost of getting school kids off island, or the whole county is going to cover the cost, or perhaps something in between. But when the dust settles, I predict that the only option that will be taken off the table is the notion of Lummi Island paying that cost alone.
And note that at no point in this post did I describe anyone as riding the Whatcom Ferry for free. Some passengers may not pay a fare, but no one rides for free. Someone has to pay for every passenger, one way or the other.
Click here for the most recent story from the Herald Politics Blog.
Click here for the most recent post from the Lummi Island Ferry Forum.
This article is about tax fairness... as I perceive it, anyway.
The County is on the record as entertaining the notion of making Lummi Island into its own ferry taxing district. This is presented as fair.
It isn't.
This is actually profoundly unfair, and may violate the State Constitution.
There are two sorts of persons who ride the ferry without paying a fare: Members of the Lummi Nation, and Lummi Island kids who go to school off island.
Members of the Lummi Nation who ride the ferry are beyond the scope of this post.
It is the school age kids who ride the ferry to get to school that are the focus of this post.
In regards to those who believe that the Lummi Island residents should have to pay the price of the Lummi Island ferry on their own, I respond as follows: "Fine. After a school is built on Lummi Island."
That's right, a school. At the expense of at least the entire school district. (Hello, Ferndale. I'm talking to you.)
See, the money that the Ferry loses on each school kid who rides the ferry to get to public school is money that has to be recovered by other means. The reason that the Ferry has to let kids ride the ferry to get to school without paying a fare is because of the mandate that the kid has to go to school. And there are no schools on Lummi Island.
Asking the Lummi Island residents to pay to get their kids off the island to go to public school is like asking residents who live a long way from the school house to pay for the extra fuel required to get buses to their houses. That's not how it works. The way it works is that all kids and parents get the same standard of care within the school district.
The Lummi Island residents are a part of School District #502. The Ferndale School District, as mentioned above.
I believe this school district owes the Lummi Island residents the same duty of care as they owe any other resident living in this same district. The notion that the residents on Lummi Island should have to pay extra just to get their kids to the same schools as the rest of the kids in district #502 is absurd on its face, and likely a violation of the State Constitution regarding education.
So, fairness dictates at least two general options for the citizens in school district #502:
Option 1: Cover the cost of building a school on Lummi Island
Option 2: Cover the cost of getting Lummi Island school kids off island.
I don't know which would ultimately end up being the more expensive solution, but I suspect it would be option number one.
If there were a school on Lummi Island, then there would be no reason to allow school age kids to ride the ferry without paying a fare. The kids wouldn't need to leave the island just to get an education, like they do now. It would be much less expensive to have a relatively small number of school faculty commute to Lummi Island than it would be to have the relatively large number of the student body commute from Lummi Island. Of course, building a school on Lummi Island promises to be anything but cheap.
I prefer Option 3, myself...
The whole County pays for the cost of getting those kids off island.
But I doubt that my view will enjoy enough popular support to be enacted by the County, so I recommend that the County get its head around the actual minimum size and scope of a ferry taxing district. So long as the school kids on Lummi Island have to get off the island to go to school, then the ferry taxing district has to encompass the entire school district that services Lummi Island school kids.
Either Ferndale is going to end up covering the cost of getting school kids off island, or the whole county is going to cover the cost, or perhaps something in between. But when the dust settles, I predict that the only option that will be taken off the table is the notion of Lummi Island paying that cost alone.
And note that at no point in this post did I describe anyone as riding the Whatcom Ferry for free. Some passengers may not pay a fare, but no one rides for free. Someone has to pay for every passenger, one way or the other.
Two Ferry trips a day oughta do it!
ReplyDeleteOne for the morning to school. One back from Skool.
Good plan! They can even land in Fairhaven too.
Apexnerd,
ReplyDeleteYou raise an interesting perspective that I hadn't thought of.
A possibly relevant fact: For islands in the San Juans not served by the public ferries, e.g. Stuart Island, the school district does not defray the costs of transport to the school where it exists. But, the school district does support a micro-school on Stuart Island, with typically one (count that, 1) teacher.
Abe Jacobson
Bellingham
Hi Abe,
ReplyDeleteGreat suggestion!
Micro schools make sense.