Outward Bound

When it comes to school construction Michigan is either a model of local control, in which individual taxpayers foot the bill and join with school boards to plan for the future, or a state that lacks directions and tends toward wasteful actions. Why? Unlike most states, Michigan exerts remarkably little oversight of school construction. The state also provides communities with easy access to huge amount of capital that school boards are clearly prepared to borrow for construction, all of which is financed through local property taxes. Michigan also provides local school boards with the authority to decide how much to spend on schools and where to build them. These are among the central findings of a new report by the Michigan Land Use Institute on school construction trends and their affect on land use patterns in Michigan.