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It takes a nearly 80,000 signatures to put a petition on the ballot.
James Calaway with the Early to Rise campaign says they’ve collected almost double that.
Calaway is delivering boxes and boxes of those signatures to the Harris County Judge Tuesday morning.
They all support putting a new tax on the ballot in Harris County in November. The tax would be just for early education. It would cost the average homeowner about $18 dollars a year.
Calaway says the campaign is about the things that matter.
“And those are children, families and our community’s future. And they are all interrelated and connected to one another. And it’s time for us to be serious about the dealing with the beginning of this process of human development.”
Houston Mayor Annise Parker says she hasn’t signed the actual petition.
But she does support doing more for early education.
“I absolutely believe that boosting early childhood education is a good idea and good for our region. I’ll reserve judgment until it gets through the political process.”
The next step is with the Harris County Judge Ed Emmett.
He has five days to certify the signatures and put the proposal on the ballot.
The judge is actually one of the biggest critics of the tax proposal so far. He has legal questions about the petition process, including the state law being used to put it on the ballot and the petition language itself.
But Calaway is confident he’ll soon take the campaign’s case to voters.
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