Years ago I sat on the 10-year budget planning committee for our local school district. We toured all of the facilities and listened to all of the district employees tell us everything they "needed", and then made our recommendations. They really did need to either build onto the middle school or build a new one and have two; that was the biggest planned expense. So we came up with things they could scale down from their wish list in order to afford the new middle school.
Of course the district fully rejected pretty much every recommendation we made - except for a couple of suggestions by two suck-up plants who said we should give these idiots everything they asked for, and that the taxpayers would pay for it. When they put it on the ballot, it was defeated by a huge margin. So they built the middle school but didn't get anything else on their list. Right after that the crash of '08-09 happened and school districts everywhere were cutting their spending. So what did ours do? Implement pretty much all of the suggestions we'd given them 3 years earlier so they could afford the new middle school. They ended up closing the existing one b/c they couldn't afford to keep both open. So the kids were still in a crowded school, but a new one. Idiots! On Monday, February 20, 2017 at 12:01:13 PM UTC-5, mitchscove wrote: > > I don't think the reasons are in the correct order. It's been my sense > that the biggest problems are public sector union pensions. They give > politicians a way to buy votes without spending a dime ,,, on their watch > ,,,, since the bill doesn't come crashing down until they're long gone. > Buying votes and campaign contributions with pension gifts is seductive. > The problem is exacerbated by 8 years of low or no interest. Fiduciary > accounts like pension funds don't do well at zero interest. > > Public Sector pensions push State College funding out of state budgets, > causing colleges to build lavish student unions to attract foreign and out > of state students. Thus, the Student Loan debt crisis. The country is a > mess and Trump has only touched on the tip of the iceberg. > > Our school district is sneaking a 5.99 mill levy into a May primary ballot > hoping no one but parents whose kids will be going home with pleas from > teachers to vote yes will show up at the polls. That sneakage is worth an > additional $35 / month on a $200,000 home ,,, median value of a home here > is $255,000. Yes, it's to give teacher's a raise above and beyond what > the appreciation in real estate appraisals would give them. > > On Saturday, February 18, 2017 at 10:04:51 AM UTC-5, brine wrote: >> >> ... just some data on my State, how does your State and taxes compare??? >> >> >> http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/02/7_reasons_why_njs_property_taxes_are_highest_in_us.html#incart_river_home >> >> -- >> brine >> http://brineb.blogspot.com/ >> > -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
