Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Check out www.fredoneverything.net/Indians.shtml and weep for the death of a great civilization. If the people aren't willing to save themselves then they deserve what they get: poverty, squalor, misery and early death.

By Any Mouse

MIddle Ground

I don't think the stakes are quite as high as either of you suggests. Our kids' education will suffer if the current overcrowding of our elementary and middle schools persist, but we will find some way to muddle through the situation, at least in the short term. On the other hand, the small levy that would be required to build a single, somewhat larger, elementary school (perhaps as little as 1 mill) won't break the bank.

We need to find a middle ground. We need to trim back our building plans to something that we can all afford, and we taxpayers need to tighten our belts just a bit. I'm not sure where that middle ground is, but we all need to focus on finding it.

Prove it

Prove to me that anyone's education is suffering from lack of space. Show me the declining grades. Show me the degradation of quality of education.

Don't say it will suffer. That is strictly your opinion. Bruce, don't get in the same rhetorical chest thumping threatening mindset as the board.

If it is suffering then prove it. If it is not, pick another song to sing.

Tell the board to prove to me that they deserve my money and are taking steps to earn it, not threaten or demand it.

Let's Get Down to Business

My point was that all of us, on both sides of the fence, need to stop chest-thumping and get down to business. We also should realize that, on this one, we're all really on the same side of the fence.

We all want good schools -- even those of us, such as myself, who have no school-age children. I owe everything that I have accomplished in life to good public schools, and wonderful teachers. How else could a poor truck driver's son ever have earned both a Ph.D. and a J.D., and become both a college professor and an attorney?

I want the kids coming up behind me to have the same opportunities. Good public schools are what make this country work, and what give reality to the American dream. Every kid, regardless of his parentage, and regardless of his race, creed, nationality or gender, deserves the same opportunities that I had.

But even if you do not share those sentiments, you must realize that good public schools will preserve the values of our homes -- the most significant investment that most of us will ever make. Bad public schools, on the other hand, will drive our home values through the floor, and lower the quality of life for everyone in this community. Compare Columbus and Groveport to Pickerington, Upper Arlington and Bexley.

The value of my home has appreciated more than $100,000 in the 15 years that I have lived here. I have been able to use that appreciation to help put my kids through great colleges. I hope that it will help finance my retirement. And I owe most of that to our good schools.

On the other hand, we all want our tax dollars spent carefully. No tax levy should be put on the ballot before it is needed, and unless it is needed. Governments must demonstrate such need to us skeptical taxpayers. We should focus on building functional, efficient, durable and low-maintenance schools -- schools that serve our educational needs, but that are built as economically as possible. Tax dollars are sacred. A government that does not treat them that way soon will have no more of them to spend.

As you must know, bringing some real fiscal responsibility to our school district and our school board was my primary mission during my 6 years on the school board. With the election of Wes Monhollen to the board, Gail Oakes and I finally had some traction. I credit West, more than anyone, with replacing our Superintendent and Treasurer, which has improved our school district's financial practices immeasurably.

We must calm down and work together to run the numbers on this one, and work out the most cost-effective approach to housing our grade-schoolers in decent quarters. We need to work out, and publicize, the cost of housing these kids in doublewides. We need to catalogue the pros and cons of this type of classroom facility.

We need to design a new school -- if that is the most cost-effective approach to this problem -- which will solve the problem, and give us a school with low maintenance expenses, low utility costs, a long economic life, and the lowest feasible cost. We need to structure our contracts with the folks that design and build this school to give them incentives to accomplish all of this, and to bring the project in on schedule and, if at all possible, under budget. And, above all, the school board needs to pledge that it will return any savings to us, by using them to pay debt service on the bonds issued to finance the project.