May 21st, 2014 Local Taxpayers Take A Stand in Mott-RegentDefeat Of Mott-Regent School Bond Was Not The Result Of A “Vote No” Effort For years we’v

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May 21st, 2014

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Local Taxpayers Take A Stand in Mott-Regent

Defeat Of Mott-Regent School Bond Was Not The Result Of A “Vote No” Effort

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For years we’ve talked about the uncontrollable nature of local government spending.

We’ve commented on the inability for state spending programs to truly restrain local property taxes.

We've seen one local government entity after another take the opportunity of the state-paid property tax relief to find new ways to increase their budgets and fill the vacuum left by the increased state funding for education.

In early April of this year, a few dozen residents in southwestern North Dakota approached the North Dakota Watchdog Network seeking help to level the playing field when it became apparent that their local school board was attempting to steamroll a bond measure that required a doubling of the constitutional 5% debt limit for the district in order to issue the bond.

The result of the election had the bond measure been passed was that the school portion of the property tax bill for local residents would essentially double.

For a farmer owning and operating 3,000 acres, it would have meant a nearly $6,000 tax increase.

Fortunately for local residents, their neighbors saw fit to practice their right to be involved in the process and succeeded.

We tried to keep this campaign quiet outside of the school district itself because we knew there would be accusations by some that an “outside group” should not be involved. The only funds used for this effort were those raised by local Mott-Regent residents themselves.

We created a website at MottRegent.com for locals to read the claims by their school board, and think about the questions those claims raised.

We launched a radio and tv campaign to direct people to the website to learn more about the issue.

And we mailed all this information to voting households in the district.

We knew there was no need to tell people to "Vote No" because the school board had rushed the process, and changed their stories many times, and really did not have a good handle on what they really wanted to do.

Mott-Regent Screenshot

The school board also, more than likely, violated state laws by launching and approving a marketing campaign designed to make people Vote Yes.

The board later tried to fix this by creating a separate bank account and using private money to place the ads, but the cat was out of the bag.

Whether the law is ever enforced is still up the in the air, the states' attorney in that county is also the brother of the school board president, so it is unlikely for any legal action to occur unless a states' attorney in another county gets involved.

It is our hope that the situation in Mott-Regent sends a message to local government officials around the state that if you intend to increase property taxes in this day and age, you better have your plan in place to make your case.

Taxpayers will no longer stand idly by, and the North Dakota Watchdog Network will help local taxpayers that are willing to put in the effort to help themselves.

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Dustin Gawrylow, Managing Director
North Dakota Watchdog Network

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