Battles over the Syracuse school budget have become an annual drama, culminating this year in a $7-million budget cut.

The battles have been baffling.

City officials claim the tax base is declining. They claim a tax increase would be necessary to give the district the money it requests.

Critics counter that the city has cut its local tax contribution to the schools. Some charge that the state has not provided Syracuse the aid it should.

City officials argue the schools have enough money, but money is wasted on high salaries, too many administrators and programs and generous benefits. Amid all the charges, understanding how much support is provided and by whom is almost impossible.

The school finance data

To try to sort out these claims, I examined the fiscal trends of the last 20 years for the city and the school district.

The city and school district report data each year to the state comptroller, who distributes it annually and publicly as the Special Report on Municipal Affairs.

I used this information to create a report on trends in Syracuse, available at:

http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/benchmarks/

A brief explanation of the data is crucial.

The comptroller's report contains the value of taxable property (the city tax base), the taxes raised to support schools, the tax rate (the percentage of property value you pay in taxes), the amount of state and federal aid, total expenditures by the schools and the number of students.

To allow comparison over time, I adjusted for inflation, so all figures are in current dollar values. Some amounts were divided by the number of students, so they represent amounts raised and spent per student.

The tricky, but crucial matters, are the tax base and the tax rate. The city did not reassess property for years; it regularly reported 1940s home values. It also expressed taxes as the rate per each $1,000 of these 1940s values.

As school budgets increased, more tax money was needed. With the market value of the city's tax base relatively stable but with home values not reassessed, the tax amount per $1,000 increased.

The market value of homes was gradually increasing, but determining if the tax rate was increasing or decreasing was very difficult, because we were all dealing with values from the 1940s. This method of reporting home values and taxes has clearly made it difficult for anyone to understand taxes.

I use the actual market value of property to track fiscal trends.

The difference, as we shall see, is not trivial.

The fiscal trends

So, what has happened?

First, state aid to the Syracuse school district has tripled since 1978. It went up significantly around 1987, and now, at around $6,000 per student, it is the primary source of district revenue.

Federal aid is also significant, at more than $1,000 per student.

Whether state aid has gone up enough is clearly a judgment call, but the state has increased its support to the schools.

So why is revenue such a problem?

The city contribution to schools has declined.

The city claims the tax base is declining. The city figures reported to the comptroller don't support those claims.

The tax base per student (adjusted for inflation) is now higher than it was in the early and mid 1980s, as the accompanying graph shows.

Market property values peaked in about 1991 and declined somewhat since then (as anyone who owns a home knows), but they are still higher than they were 15 to 20 years ago.

While we can certainly argue over what past year we choose as a comparison point, there has not been a steady erosion of the tax base over the last two decades. What has changed significantly is that since 1987, the city has steadily reduced the tax rate to support schools.

The school tax rate was at 2 percent of market values from 1978 until 1987. Since then it has declined at a fairly steady rate to 1.2 percent of the market value of property.

While the city has been discussing taxes based on a dubious rate per $1,000 on 1940s assessment values, and told us that taxes are rising, the tax rate to support schools has declined.

As a resident and a parent, the trends are startling.

While everyone talks as if maintaining the schools will require a tax increase, the tax rate and local support for students have been declining. The city is cutting $7 million from the budget, and enacting a lower tax rate.

Whether the tax rate ought to go back to 1.4 percent or 1.6 percent is for residents to discuss and the political process to decide. But we at least ought to be operating with correct facts about what level of tax burden we are bearing.

What is remarkable is that officials knew this and misled us, or they were unaware of it, which raises serious questions about their competence. Either conclusion is unpleasant to contemplate.

When I asked city officials about the trend, the reply was that "tax bills (dollars residents must pay) have gone up and try to tell a resident they haven't."

The perceptual problem is the city's own creation.

For years, the city has not told us in a comprehensible way what our tax rate was and how it is determined. It is its fault, not ours, that we don't understand our taxes and tax rates, and that we can't have an intelligent debate about how much we now support schools and existing tax trends.

Butting heads

If the school tax rate has been decreasing, then perhaps some restoration can solve this conflict. My conversations with city officials, however, suggest this conflict is really about something else.

Every public official I talked with first struggled to understand the tax rate issue. Once they did, they inevitably moved to stories about the school district.

The stories always involve administrators: too many administrators; salaries and perks that are out of control; protection of administrators' salary lines when cuts are made; incompetent administrators; arrogance and deception in presenting budgets; unwillingness to answer budget questions accurately; and bad management.

I have heard these stories for a decade, but they seem more intense now. The school budget battle appears to really be a power struggle about reining in the school district.

Whether waste and excess are pervasive cannot be told without a serious audit. Regardless, my impression is that the frustration with district leadership, and the desire to punish the district, has reached such a level that the real issue has been lost.

I rarely heard a public official mention the importance of education to children or to the survival of the city. I didn't hear anyone fret about the quality of teaching, or what to do about the deadwood and incompetent who destroy student interest in learning.

All I heard was stories - angry stories - about administrators.

Education is too important to have its future dominated by this struggle. We have been let down by all parties in the issue. We need city officials who have the courage and interest to take on this issue, with a focus on improving education.

Figure out what a tax rate is, and explain our taxes to us, and don't sigh that it's too difficult.

If there is waste, have the courage to demand cuts at the top or where needed, and promise support in return. You will only win votes with that stance.

If there is envy over what administrators make relative to city officials (as I often heard), do something about it, rather than let it shape reactions.

If the school district has lost its credibility, then clean out those at the top and start to restore that credibility.

Let's have an informed debate about school finance and the courage to deal with district problems and maintaining quality schools, and not an insider, punitive battle between officials while education loses.

Jeff Stonecash is a professor of policital science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

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