Make the Tourists Pay for School Security? I Got Questions.

Now this one got my attention, because the idea sounds good the second you hear it: make people staying in hotels kick in more money, and use some of that money to make our schools safer. I don't think anybody is against protecting kids. But the way you sell an idea and how it works when it gets passed are two different things.

I'm all for safer schools. I just wanna see where every dollar is going.6ix

At an October 7 school board work session, Washington County Public Schools Superintendent Gary Willow brought up a proposal to raise the county's hotel rental tax from 6% to 8%. That is a proposed increase of TWO percentage points, not a 2% price increase on the hotel bill. And the school system isn't asking to keep the entire increase for itself.

Here's where they say the money would go

According to the reporting, school officials are talking about things like cameras on buses, improvements at school entrances and surveillance around athletic facilities. Those are real needs to discuss. I don't wanna send my kids to school worrying about whether somebody bothered to fix a security problem.

But I also don't want the word 'security' to be this magic phrase that shuts down questions. How much money does one hotel-tax point actually raise per year? Which schools get upgraded first? What is the price tag for each project? Who gets a say in what 'safer' looks like? Right now, the proposal doesn't have a public annual revenue estimate attached in the reporting.

Another part people might miss: the Board of Education hasn't approved the legislative proposal yet. It was discussed at the October 7 work session, with the board expected to revisit its legislative agenda at its October 20 meeting. Changing the tax would require lawmakers' support in Annapolis, too.

I actually think asking visitors to help fund local services can make sense. Plenty of places use hotel taxes to support things the surrounding community needs. But I ain't gonna pretend that any new tax is automatically smart just because the idea has a good name.

If the plan comes with a clear budget and real accountability, cool, let's talk. But before anybody tells us it's 'for the children,' tell us exactly what gets bought and how we'll know it worked.