Branson’s “Bikings,” pillage and plunder and then ask school district taxpayers, “What’s in your wallet?”

In a recent television commercial for a major credit card company, a band of marauding Vikings pillage and plunder until they are stopped by a consumer with the right credit card in their wallet. Every time he sees the commercial the Ole Seagull is reminded of the “pillaging and plundering” of Branson’s school district by the “Bikings.”

“Bikings” is a term the Ole Seagull uses to describe the Branson Board of Aldermen, City Administrator Terry Dody, and what he believes are the disrespectful, irresponsible, and uncooperative actions they have taken that place the quality of our children’s education at risk. Oh, they dress better and clean up nicer than the Vikings but let there be no doubt about it, their pillaging and plundering of the tax revenues available to the Branson School District could adversely effect the quality of our children’s education if something doesn’t change!

What is the apparent rationale for these Biking actions? Is it their apparent paranoia about having to have a “new” Branson or their almost psychotic preoccupation with preventing big box stores from going anywhere else but in Branson? “You know Seagull some could say that it is you that has the paranoia and psychotic preoccupation regarding the Branson Board of Aldermen and Dody.”

That’s fair enough and just like an Ole Seagull they are entitled to their opinion. To the best of his ability, the vast majority of the columns he has written are about actions taken, or not taken, not about people and personalities. “But Seagull, isn’t it people who either act or don’t act?” That’s true but, in the final analysis, whether it’s a President, an Ole Seagull, alderman, or city administrator, it is the action taken, or not, that creates accountability and reaction.

From teachers to programs and facilities, just about everything involved with the Branson School District provides a quality education for our children. It is that way because the school district has been blessed with school boards and people in administrative positions who have had the vision, commitment, administrative ability, leadership skills, community trust, and financing to make it so.

That said however, unless an Ole Seagull misses his guess, the foundational element upon which the educational experience of our children depends is adequate financing. It is financing that enables the school district to hire and retain quality teachers, provide programs, maintain facilities etc. Each year, from local revenue sources, the school district must raise about $5,000 per student.

Unlike the City of Branson, who receives a lot of revenue from the retail sales tax, the majority of the local funding for the school district comes from residential and commercial real estate tax, with the lions share coming from the commercial side. The Bikings, in spite of repeated warnings and requests by the Branson School District not to do so, legally confiscated the vast majority of the school district’s commercial real estate tax revenue generated by Branson Landing and the Branson Hills redevelopment project for the next ten years and beyond. But wait, it gets worse.

Even as the Bikings are confiscating revenues needed to run the school district, the projects they are building, and the thousands of “Branson average” paying jobs they will offer, will bring hundreds of new children into the Branson School District, virtually at one time. The school district doesn’t have ten years to wait; it must provide and pay for the education of these new children from day one, at an average of $5,000 per student per year. Yet the Bikings have confiscated, and appropriated for their own use, a substantial portion of the school districts revenues that could be used to meet this increased challenge.

Does it take a Solomon to see that the short fall for the school district will add up quickly and could, without additional funding, result in a deterioration of the quality of the educational experience that the Branson School District provides? It will be a gradual insidious thing, larger class sizes, cutting of programs, reducing preventive maintenance on facilities, gradually losing quality teachers and administrators etc. but, in an Ole Seagulls opinion, it will happen unless additional funding is provided.

From an Ole Seagulls perspective, the Bikings, the Branson Board of Aldermen and City Administrator Terry Dody, have created the problem through their one sided actions and are accountable for its solution. Would it be inappropriate to ask them, “What’s in your wallet, and what are you going to do to correct or mitigate the problem that you created?”

Better yet, why not do it in an open and public meeting including representatives from the Branson School District and the Bikings? Unfortunately, the Bikings solutions for the kids and taxpayers of the Branson School District will more than likely be the equivalent of saying, “We know what’s best for everyone and besides, we got what we wanted, what’s in your wallet?”