Sorry folks but Mr. Flinn keeps coming at me and this was his response today from me for those not on the listserv... Excuse me?? Mr. Flinn, you say that “Putting the track next to the football field or putting it at Dothan Brook are ideas that have been considered and dropped, so bringing them up again only serves to show that you tend to listen only to yourself when you are arguing.” I was on the School Board before the big town/school bond vote and for the second vote and we never discussed putting a track at Dothan Brook or beside the football field. These are totally new concepts. You seem to be the only one who has heard of them before so I don’t know where you got your information. Please lead us to the meeting minutes or CATV broadcast where they were discussed. You also say Mr. Flinn that “there is no money remaining, the school board voted to use the remaining funds to go ahead with the field house. If this bond gets voted down you can forget about anything being done for a track or for the field sports fields for at least another 18 months” True, the school board did vote to use the remaining money on building a field house but that doesn’t mean the people in town have to let them use that money for that purpose. It is the town’s money not five people’s money on the school board. By voting to allocate all that money to the Field House, they are sending a signal to everyone that there are no other alternatives to build a track. The field house and the artificial turf are pork barrel add-ons to the original bond. There was a legitimate need for a track and an engineering study that said work needed to be done on the Middle School and there had been a long battle by hockey supporters for improvements at the hockey rink but there was never a grassroots movement or an engineering study that called for artificial turf or a field house. These two initiatives were added on the by the school administration. I’ve survived scare tactics like those that you are presently using before, when I was the only one on the board who opposed closing the White River School because they insisted it would blow up any minute because of its old furnaces. Fortunately, those warnings were ungrounded and the school is still using the same furnaces today and the school has been rated one of the top ten schools in the state. We don’t need artificial turf to draw people to our town. As I have said before, the leading real estate website called “Zillow” only lists the academic performances of towns on standardized tests when comparing them and completely overlooks whether or not they have artificial turf on their fields. We don’t need artificial turf to improve our football team’s performance because they have won many championships on the grass that is there now. We don’t need artificial turf to save money on maintenance either as I have proved in previous emails. And, we don’t need artificial turf so that teams can practice earlier in the spring. We have always managed without it. Excavating that site for artificial turf is extremely cost prohibitive as I pointed out in my previous post. The $1.7 million of site work required is almost six times what “Field Turf Inc.” says it costs for a typical site prep for an artificial turf field @$320,000. And, your constant repetition that this bond is an insignificant cost to individual taxpayers is myopic. A bond unlike teachers’ positions can’t be cut when money is tight. So, in times like these when the school’s financial officer has told the public we are presently short one million dollars and it doesn’t include the outcome of salary negotiations with both the support staff and teachers unions that will occur this year, nor include the $264,000 per year in debt service of this bond, not having this debt service could make the difference between saving four teachers positions or not. Budgets are not made based on people’s willingness to pay a little more on their tax bill, they are made by looking at climbing costs and then finding ways to trim them. School districts only have one place where they can make up shortfalls in financing and that is through staff reductions which of course leads to bigger classes or as happened a few years ago, dropping subjects like French at the Middle School. (since returned) When school board members get a forecast like a million dollar shortfall, the CFO also tells them how much of a tax increase is needed to make up that shortfall, for example, an 8% increase. What the school board then does, as I have witnessed over four years of budgeting, is pull out an acceptable number for an increase out of their hats that they think the public will vote for. This increase is usually in the 3% range. There is no science or planning involved, it is a simple decision based on how high an increase in taxes, the voters will accept so it doesn’t matter if bonds are only 5% of your overall tax bill, it only matters how the cost of that bond affects the bottom line and in this case, it is equivalent to four teachers’ salaries. Yesterday’s cost comparison between building and maintaining a natural turf field and an artificial turf field that was taken from the “Field Turf “website didn’t post well so here it is again.. Base preparation Natural Turf $150,000 Field Turf $320,000 Materials Natural Turf $220,000 Field Turf $400,000 Maintenance Natural Turf $200,000 Field Turf $50,000 Total Natural Turf $570,000 Field Turf $770,000 I voted for the school/municipal bond, the high school renovation bond and White River School renovation bond but I will not vote for this bond. The track should be built with the remaining monies and the athletic equipment should be put into the two rooms of the high school that were considered in September as it is part of their sports curriculum. The field house isn’t needed since the renovated hockey rink has upgraded locker rooms that both the football team and hockey players can use. Thanks, Jeff Arnold
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 21:59:28 +0000
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