by Brian R. Edwards, Stevensville
Two flyers came in the mail this week. One asks for a Safety Levy. One asks for a Technology Levy. Both are glossy. Both speak of the children. Both arrive when calf checks are not yet in.
I read them twice. Then I read 1 Samuel 8.
Israel asked for a king. Samuel told them what a king would cost: “He will take the tenth of your seed… and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you.” That was three thousand years ago. The flyer in your mailbox is the same conversation.
We have been here before, and not only in Scripture. The colonists fought the crown’s quitrents — a small annual rent on land already paid for. The Whiskey Rebellion fought a tax on a still. Howard Jarvis and the kitchen-table revolt of 1978 capped what the assessor could do in California. Each generation has had to relearn the same lesson: a perpetual fee on a paid-for home is not a tax. It is a tenancy.
Begin with a one-room school. Add a building. Add a bus. Add a counselor. Add a second counselor. Add a “safety coordinator.” Add a “technology director.” Add a bond to fund the building. Add a levy to staff the bond. Add a levy to renew the levy. Each step is reasonable in isolation. None of them is reasonable in sequence. The result is what we have: a permanent class of people whose salaries depend on the levy passing. The children are the costume. The salaries are the constituency.
I love these children. I do not believe these levies serve them. I will vote for a school. I will not vote for a campus. I will vote for a teacher. I will not vote for a consultant. I will vote once. I will not vote again next year for the same thing under a new name.
A longer version of this letter, with the history laid out and the Scriptures cited in full, is posted at dolltv.com/the-levy.
“But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.” — Micah 4:4
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