Final Polish: PROPOSITION 30

            The community we live in is already on poverty-stricken. The state is losing money every day that goes by on education, health and public safety. The government had spent billions of dollars for the past years on budget cuts. Government Jerry Brown decided to come up with a proposition that sales and tax increase could help the state avoid budget cuts, provide education to students and public safety. He came up with proposition 30. Proposition 30 will increase personal income tax on earning over $250,000 for seven years and sales taxes by ¼ cent for four years. This means every $4 that you spend for a hamburger it will go to the schools and to the public safety fund. From the income tax, 89 % will go to K-12 schools and 11 % to community colleges to provide students with a good education. Proposition 30 will also fund public safety services from the state to local governments. It will raise six billion dollars in additional annual state revenues from years of 2012- ’13, with smaller amounts for education and the local public. Such as, hospitals, prisons, and fire departments. Proposition 30 will help pay down any of the state's dept by building up years of gimmicks and borrowing while preventing cuts towards schools, public safety, and critical services for seniors, families, and small business. It will not only help with the dept but it will also help California save billions in future prison costs. With proposition 30, our state could go back on its’ feet and no budget cuts would be done.

             If not approved, schools will face an additional 6 billion dollars in budget cuts. There would be larger classes, more teachers would get laid-off, tuition would rise and there would be shorter school year. It may also lead to schools being shut down. College students will have to face additional $150 tuition for spring. You would have to pay sales taxes on every purchase buy online. Prisons won’t have classes for the prisoners if there is not enough money on the fund for prison. Prisons would have limited space and prisoners would have to be in parole. More police officers and security officers would also get laid off.

Proposition 30 is a good opportunity to have in order to cover our state from budget cuts on public schools, community colleges and universities. It would help students with their school materials and class courses. I am a current college student and it is my third semester here. I have been receiving financial help for the past year. I had to use my own money from my own pocket to buy my books this semester due to financial issues. It was hard because text books are very expensive to buy. In fact, my mother had also experienced college before. She would go to college and work at the same time, but every paycheck she would get; it would go to the rent, and other bills. The money she had left over was not enough to pay for her classes. My mother did not qualify for financial aid back then. It was her first semester at a community college, in half of the semester, she dropped out of college.

         What does the American Dream mean to me? To me it means that you have the opportunity to go to school and gain good education in order to make something good of yourself. This means proposition 30 should go through because it will affect me as well as other students that want to follow their dreams. My dream is to be a criminal detective to help people find their missing loved ones, find out who killed the victim of a crime case, find the killer and put him or her behind bars. If prop 30 does not pass it, I would have to pay for my education due to any budget cuts being made and there will not be enough money to buy my books and pay my classes. I would be tight on money especially when I and my family are low income. My parents don’t make enough money for them to be paying for my education. It won’t make any difference if I work or not because even though I’m working, I still make about 300-400 dollars a month. Mostly everything I get from every pay check goes to bills. There will not be any jobs opened for this job due to tight money funds and budget cuts if it does not pass. It will affect me because I would be in risk of being laid-off or I would not be hired due to limited detectives for this career. It will also affect other students who want to keep going to school after graduating from high school. They will know that it would be hard to go to a college or university, even though they applied for scholarships and weren’t approved from their hard work. Students will eventually stop going to school due to short money for paying expenses for school, for not receiving full scholarships, or financial aid.

        Proposition 30 should go through in order to make the community better. Schools would have more money and more teachers in order to help students succeed in their class subjects. More college students would graduate and follow their dreams. Also the state would balance on every spending made by the government. There would be more jobs for unemployed people. It would help us as much as our community if there is money on every fund for students’ education, our health and the safety of the public. Therefore, proposition 30 should go through the initiative process of the state’s constitution.