Pastors’ opposition to record $2.5 billion CMS bond offers flawed solution, county says

A historic Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ bond request is drawing some unusual opposition, and it may be based in part on a flawed solution, according to the county’s chief financial officer.

Mecklenburg County voters typically overwhelmingly support school bonds — multi-million dollar CMS bonds were approved in 2017, 2013 and 2007. But this year’s $2.5 billion request is by far the biggest in the history of North Carolina, and cracks have emerged in the usual unanimous support.

Members of the African American Faith Alliance and African American Clergy Coalition in Charlotte say recent Mecklenburg property revaluations resulted in tax hikes that disproportionately impacted Black and brown communities in the crescent of lower-income communities in the north, east and west of the city.

They say the bond that will be decided on Nov. 7 will add additional taxes each year and potentially displace older property owners who won’t be able to afford their homes.

Ricky Woods, pastor of First Baptist Church-West, wrote in an op-ed published Monday in The Charlotte Observer the tax hike from the bond would cause “the largest Black resident displacement since the Brooklyn neighborhood was demolished for an urban renewal project in the 1960s.”

Woods, Dennis Williams, the pastor of Faith Memorial Missionary Baptist Church, and Jordan Boyd, the pastor of Rockwell A.M.E. Zion Church, were co-authors of the op-ed, writing: “Beginning in March, members of the African American Clergy Coalition, including me, began lobbying CMS and Mecklenburg County officials not to place a bond before voters in this election cycle — to no avail.”

Woods and multiple Black clergy did not return a request for comment for this story.

During a presentation to the Hood Hargett Breakfast Club in September, Superintendent Crystal Hill said the bond package for 30 projects across the district will require property tax increases in 2025, 2028 and 2029. Those increases of 1 cent per $100 in valuation each will help pay for debt associated with the $2.5 billion package.

“It will make Charlotte less affordable for the very people the bond package is intended to serve,” Woods, Williams and Boyd wrote in the op-ed.

Pastors’ bond alternative

The pastors’ proposed solution is for the district to make an investment that will improve academic outcomes and not buildings. “In the past three years CMS has seen its low-performing schools increase from 42 schools in 2020-21 to 59 in 2022-23,” they wrote.

They also say CMS should use Mecklenburg County’s rolling capital improvement program to address facility needs. The pastors say the program “allows CMS to make requests for high priority capital improvements for the next five years without any tax increases.” They say using the rolling capital improvement program would require CMS to prioritize its building projects, too.

But David Boyd, Mecklenburg County’s chief financial officer, told the Observer the pastors’ interpretation of the capital improvement program is not accurate. He said the transition to a rolling plan does not negate the need for tax increases, it is only a transition away from “Mecklenburg County’s historic practice of setting Capital Improvement Plans every five years versus on an annual basis.”

“The amount of capital spending coupled with any debt required to fund that spending is what drives the need for the tax increases that are currently projected,” Boyd said. “CMS spending as well as other county spending will be a part of the annual rolling CIP process each year.”

What CMS bond supporters say

Supporters of the bond say people living in the “crescent” will benefit the most.

Colette Forrest, a Charlotte activist and CMS parent, has lived in Wesley Heights for 23 years. The neighborhood, where she owns a home, is in the crescent.

“I have seen property taxes go up but it’s not because of a bond,” Forrest told the Observer. “It’s because of gentrification. It’s reckless and irresponsible to try to pin tax increases on the bonds and say Black people will be displaced. It is not fair to make people fearful because the bond will not displace anyone.”

Forrest has a son who is a junior in high school and has attended West Charlotte High School since he was a freshman. Her son attended classes in the old West Charlotte High buildings and now goes to school in its new building that opened a year ago.

“These kids deserve good schools,” Forrest said. “The energy is different in the new building. There is a culture shift occurring in West Charlotte. They have gone from an ‘F’ school to a ‘D’ school. These kids have pride in this new building and that is a direct result of the 2017 bond money. Our Black and brown kids deserve the very best. It makes a difference in their educational environment.”

Forrest says she’s confused about the pastors’ position on the bond.

“As a Black CMS parent and Black homeowner in the Crescent, I wonder if the ministers would be opposing the bond if they got their choice for superintendent,” Forrest said.

The Observer, prior to the 2022 election and Superintendent Hill’s eventual selection, reported Dennis Williams advised a nonprofit on which CMS board candidates to support and lobbied those candidates in the race to make him the system’s next superintendent. At the time, Williams was a leader of the African American Faith Alliance.

County commissioner opposition

Arthur Griffin, who has three grandchildren attending CMS schools, served on the CMS board for 17 years and was the board chairman from 1997 to 2002. He was elected to serve on the Board of County Commissioners in 2022.

Griffin, along with fellow commissioners Pat Cotham and Vilma Leake, said he has “deep concerns” about the bond — both in its impact on taxpayers and the projects themselves.

“It really hurts me to have to be forced to take this position,” Griffin said. “It’s all or nothing, but there’s a better way.”

Griffin wanted to approve $1 billion for schools and then come back five years later to ask for more to help “reduce the pain.”

“The school board is not telling the public what the tax increase is going to be,” Griffin said. “They’re saying it’s a hamburger a month or something like that. It’s going to be more than a hamburger a month.”

Griffin also doesn’t buy into the urgency aspect of the bond district officials have expressed: if CMS can’t build schools now, the costs will only increase in the future. He said that means costs for all 30 projects will be higher than current projections because of the years it will take to build them if voters approve the bond.

“They would be halfway right if they built them all today,” Griffin said. “You’re darn right the cost of construction is going to go up. They’re not building all of these schools in one year. “

Finally, Griffin says CMS is not being transparent about Second Ward, a school that opened in 1923 in the former Brooklyn neighborhood. It was the first Black public high school in Charlotte and became an anchor for Black Charlotteans, Griffin, a 1966 Second Ward graduate, says.

It closed in 1969.

CMS is making good on its promise to build another Second Ward if voters approve the bond. The New Second Ward Medical and Technology High School will be a full magnet built on the old metro site. Griffin says he’s been told it will hold up to 2,000 students.

“I don’t know how they’re going to get 2,000 students into a school on that site,” Griffin said. “(CMS) is not being transparent when it comes to Second Ward, and I can’t support this.”

Who is supporting CMS bond campaign?

Still, there’s plenty of support for the bond.

The Charlotte Regional Business Alliance hired heavy-weight political consultants Jim Blaine, of the Raleigh-based firm The Differentiators, Morgan Jackson, of Raleigh-based firm Nexus Strategies, and Doug Wilson, founder of Alexander Wilson Consulting in Charlotte, to help pass the bond.

Its promotion leading up to the November vote includes the Vote Yes for School Bonds Campaign that launched Sept. 7. A group of business leaders, community advocates, parents and educators, including Mary McCray, a retired educator and former chair of the CMS board, lead the campaign.

MeckEd, a Charlotte nonprofit that supports public schools, calls the school bond package “a whopper” that is needed for school renovations across the county. Voting against it to show dissatisfaction with CMS is shortsighted and harmful to student and teachers, says Jennifer Roberts, who was elected mayor of Charlotte in 2015 after serving four terms on the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners.

“Voting against a bond only delays the inevitable, making it more expensive in the long run,” Roberts said. “A failed bond package will indicate an erosion of community support in general for our schools, leading to more teachers and bus drivers to leave.”

Roberts in an email message said she served on the Board of Commissioners in 2005 when a school bond failed. She says the number of mobile classrooms grew and buckets were used to catch rainwater because there was no money to repair roofs.

“Whether you are a conservative concerned about the wise use of tax dollars, a progressive worried about housing affordability and equity in education or a citizen with no children, you should want safe and healthy schools,” Roberts said. “Imperfect as it may be in the eyes of some, it is what we have before us. If we let the perfect be the enemy of the good, it is not just students who pay the price, but all of us.”

The Lake Norman Chamber of Commerce, a group that opposed the CMS bond in 2017 because the package had no significant improvements for any schools in north Mecklenburg County, supports the $2.5 billion request.

Bill Russell, the chamber’s president and CEO, says the bond package on this year’s ballot takes into account north Mecklenburg’s old schools and overwhelming growth in the area. The package includes replacement buildings for schools in Cornelius and Huntersville, a new North Mecklenburg High School and the addition of a middle school.

The Cornelius Town Board unanimously adopted a resolution supporting the bond, and the Black Political Caucus of Charlotte-Mecklenburg voted to support the bond.

“Some of our schools in north Mecklenburg were built when (Franklin D. Roosevelt) was president,” Russell said. “HVAC and mold problems are prevalent at our old schools.”

Russell also says the bond package will address safety concerns in buildings.

“This bond package puts us on a pathway to creating safe and spectacular learning environments,” he said. “(We) encourage our member businesses and citizens to vote yes for the bonds.”