On June 25th, for the second time in nine months, voters in my school district, the Johnston Community School District (JCSD), will be voting on a $41 million bond referendum to primarily build a new $81 million high school. Unlike the last time, it'll probably pass, and if not this time, then there will be another time.
That's still no reason to vote yes.
As with virtually all such tax increase proposals that require voter approval, I heartily oppose this one. I'm not denying that there may be a current / future overcrowding issue in some school buildings, but I am denying that it should take $112 million of taxpayer money to solve that.
(There's one of the many head-fakes that voters get on deals like this - the bonding covers $41 million, but other taxpayer funds / levies will cover the other $71 million. That equals $112 million of our money, and I tabulated that without needing a new school facility to help me do it.)
If you want to know all about the referendum, and how the money will purportedly be spent, and the estimated cost to property owners, there's plenty of electronic or print information available, of course paid for by us JCSD taxpayers. But if you simply want to know about how ironic-to-borderline-dumb it would be for Johnston school district taxpayers to support it, just read this:
1) After failing to pass the referendum nine months ago, JCSD changed the bonding amount from $51 million to $41 million - but not by cutting anything, only by deferring the $10 million to other taxpayer funded pools. In other words, they cut absolutely nothing. They apparently take us taxpayers for fools.
2) The $112 million doesn't include some very large ancillary future expenditures that are admittedly part of the long-term plan, such as a new football stadium. You know, for educational purposes. Are we just supposed to forget about that little item?
3) Voting to increase your own taxes is never a good idea. Let's face it, it's a little bit crazy. It's a lot crazy when you consider.....
4)
School districts are often poor stewards of our money.
5) Given the current and future age of technology, what sense does it make to build expensive, huge, new brick-and-mortar schools? Shouldn't we be planning on ways to bring classrooms to students via on-line and digital means?
6) More than a decade ago, with the support of JCSD, our own Polk County passed a local option sales tax (LOST) to increase sales taxes from 5% to 6% for a 10-year period to fund new school infrastructure. That was the deal, ten years only. Liars! Less than ten years later, they and every other school district were already lobbying to extend the time, and ultimately in 2008, the state of Iowa simply went to a permanent 6% sales tax. Why should we believe anything the JCSD tells us now about taxes, when they had no problem lying to us taxpayers a few years ago?
7)
Did I mention that school districts are often poor stewards of our money?
Here's a final thing that gets to me about this goofy referendum - it's being largely supported by a very Republican-leaning district. These folks want to tax others to benefit them and or their school children, regardless of whether those taxpayers will receive any direct benefit from the school.
In other words, thousands of folks who claim to hate the so-called socialistic ideology of the Obama administration, seem perfectly willing to support this socialistic measure. It's another example of how some people only oppose taxes and government spending unless it's good for them, and they ought to be required to forfeit their Obama-bashing cards.
Fellow citizens of the JCSD - don't be duped! A 'no' vote doesn't mean you oppose education, it means you support not letting others unnecessarily spend your money. The tax-and-spend monster that is JCSD doesn't need to be fed, it needs to be starved. We can do far better with far less than over $100 million.
