A Discussion on the Promise Program
by Bill Lynn, Fifth Ward Alderman

Over the last several months you have heard about the Promise Program. This program was based on a program in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It would provide every high school graduate in Davenport a scholarship to go to college. The amount of the scholarship would be based on the existing tuition rates at Scott Community College and the University of Iowa. We would provide enough money to attend Scott for the first two years and enough to attend the University of Iowa for the last two years. It could be used at any college in the US. 

The idea was that it would be funded using local option sales tax money, and that would require a vote of the electorate. The original plan was for a special election to be held in the spring. That idea was tabled by the last council since it was felt there were too many unanswered questions and too little information..

As a college professor I obviously support the idea of more education for people. The day of jobs for unskilled people is over. No matter what you do in today’s world requires some type of training beyond high school. Depending on what you want to do that training could be a few weeks or many years. 

That being said, I felt it was premature to move this to the voters. There were too many unanswered questions, and the current council and mayor agreed. We are establishing a task force to look at this program. 

I have many comments on this, but I will not include them at this point since there is no program being considered. I would like to make a few observations.

First, the Kalamazoo program was funded by private donations. They received an anonymous $15,000,000 donation to fund the program. The program is less than one year old, so I am not sure we can draw many conclusions at this point. Other cities have considered similar programs, but have decided against committing taxpayer money. 

Second, in one meeting it was stated this would not raise taxes. This is untrue. The current local option sales tax is earmarked for property tax reduction and capital improvements. This provides us over $12,000,000 per year. If we use this money for the Promise Program we will need to raise taxes to cover this lost revenue. It we don’t we will be unable to pay debt obligations. We have been told that we are currently charging the highest property tax rate we can, but that is only partly true. Your property tax bill is based on several different taxes. The one that is at a maximum is the operating levy. The debt levy (which is used to pay back bonds) is unlimited so we can raise this as much as we want. That is the one that would be impacted.

The claim that there would be no tax increase is based on some assumptions. For one it is based on the assumption that enrollment in Davenport schools would rise and if this happens we will get more state money since each student is subsidized by the state. The other assumption is that while the city will raise taxes the school district will lower them. This is not guaranteed. Finally it assumes that property values will rise and increase revenue. 

I will make more comments on this later, but I will wait for the task force recommendation.