WASTEFUL SPENDING EXPOSED
Until a couple of years ago there was no one on
the board who pointed out the costly mistakes that superintendent Bailey had made in the
budgeting process. The unnecessary burden that result from the superintendent’s
ineptness as a fiscal planner are obvious to every businessman, so when I was elected to
the board, I started to demand accountability. My prompting has apparently made the
superintendent recognize that the best he can
do, does not fill the bill. He has now abandoned his budgeting duties to a “Budget
Advisory Committee”. Hopefully the committee will consist of local businessmen who do
have experience in budgeting.
The superintendent has, in the
past, used a hand picked group of his most ardent followers to ram through his bad ideas.
I remember the building committee in which Bailey did not initially have the support of the majority. Bailey then
dumped one member who in the past had showed tendencies for independent thinking, and
added to the group some of his followers until he had the majority. If that is the kind of
group he is assembling again, the group will not have any more credibility than the
superintendent, who lately has begun to
sign budget letters as “The Board of Education”, trying to shift the blame
of his mistakes to the school board.
WASTEFUL SPENDING BEYOND THE INFLATION RATE
The damage to
the district’s finances is deep and long lasting. We had a million dollar surplus
when superintendent Bailey came here. He spent that, and despite enormous increases in
state aid, and local taxes we are still facing higher taxes due to the wasteful spending. Decades after Tom Bailey has skipped the school
district, our children will be paying for the damage. Despite huge increases in state aid
we have had in the past two years local tax increases totaling 15.5%. The inflation rate
for the same period was 4.3%. The enrollment has declined during the same period with 42
students or 3.5% Thus there is no correlation between the increase in waste and the actual
increases due to higher cost. |
