Superintendent Paul Durand indicates in his
December Message:
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On February 21, 2012, we will be asking our district taxpayers for their endorsement
of our schools as we seek to raise revenues to help us address various building repairs
and upgrades through a bond election.
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When we look a little closer, we can see that project list contains multi-millions of dollars
to build sports facilities, parking lots, and a lot of other things do not contribute to our students education
or safety. Do we really need a "synthetic turf Football/Soccer stadium" for $900,000 right now?
View complete project list.
Summarize Projects by Type.
The school district, and it's "financial advisors", Ehlers & Associates have put together a
chart and a calculator to tell you that it will only be a small amount ($112 on $150K property). What
they carefully state is that will be the additional amount you pay in *2013* - NOT the amount it will
be for the 18 YEARS that it is on the books - not by a longshot!!!
They have carefully reworked it so that they are paying NO PRINCIPAL in the year 2013 - just interest to
keep the rate LOW - only recouping $1.1 Million the first year. By the time you get going, the rate jumps up to
almost $4 MILLION A YEAR. I wonder why they don't indicate how much of a tax increase THAT will be?
They won't tell you that number, but a rational person would have to assume that it would be 4 TIMES AS MUCH!
Of course, by then it won't matter - you will have voted for it and be stuck with the result!
I suppose while we're at it, we should mention that it will not cost us $28.5 MILLION - That's
just the PRINCIPAL - the true cost with the interest we must pay on it is
$44.3 MILLION according to
their documents!
Let us not forget, we still have EXISTING BUILDING BONDS we're still paying at a rate of almost
$3 MILLION a year currently - that will run through 2022! And they still need MORE money?!!!
The National Center for Education Statistics compiles data on all public schools.
Here are a few of the past years, as well as the most recent. You see the latest at
their site.
When we compare these, we see that we have much larger class sizes, with less teachers AND less students.
There has been a steady INCREASE in funding (from local and government sources). While the number of teaching
jobs has suffered in these years, the number of administration and support staff has stayed virtually the same.
Click to see larger image.
