I was disappointed to see both the Bend measures (establish a mass transportation district, more money for schools) fail, though not particulary surprised: you can pretty much guarantee that when a measure appears in Central Oregon that requires raising taxes, it will get shot down.
But hell, do kids have to be cannibalizing themselves in the schools before this town raises some money to help relieve the overcrowding and budget issues? And since the money was going to be raised by increasing property taxes, should only property owners be allowed to vote on these issues?
Personally, I think less than $100 per year is a small price to pay if it helps alleviate the Lord of the Flies problems my own kids will be facing within the next couple of years.
As to the mass transit issue, I’d love to see it here, and I supported it, but… Keep in mind this is the city that made national news when it proposed banning stinky people from riding the bus, so you’ll understand if I express skepticism about the whole affair.
And this is the best election day story I heard: Tuesday morning my friend Kerry asked if I had a number two pencil to fill out his ballot—he didn’t have any at home and that was what had hung him up on getting it mailed earlier (Oregon is entirely vote-by-mail, remember, but on the last day you can drop off your ballot at the designated locations since it’s too late to mail it). Later, when he went to drop the ballot off, a Z21 news team interviewed him on why he waited until the last minute to turn his ballot in. He gave the honest response: he couldn’t find a number two pencil! He said the guy running the camera was the new crazy weatherman (if you live in Central Oregon, you probably know who I mean) and the guy gave Kerry a big thumbs-up and shit-eating grin—my words, I’m paraphrasing :). I never did see if it made it on TV but we sure had a good laugh about that.
The reason most property tax measures get voted down here is because (and I sort of agree with them) folks believe that the money they’re getting isn’t being used wisely. There are a pile administrative personnel in each school and at the administrative office that are (Fairly) useless, yet are getting paid more than quite a few people. This is especially true in school offices: there are a pile of secretaries, but that number could easily be knocked down. But who do they get rid of instead? The teachers. Utter crap, if you tell me.
Hmm, I observe that "utterlycrap.com" is available, that might make an interesting companion site to UtterlyBoring 🙂
I won’t argue that the school administration and structure could use an overhaul, that just seems logical to me. But I can’t really speak on whether the money would be used wisely or not, since it’s a moot point– they never get the money so we don’t know *how* it would end up being used. They might surprise us, but we’ll never know…
Utterlycrap.com would be a great site, but I barely have the time to populate my site as it is. And there’s so much crap out there, like how pretty much every government org. is run, that I could make a full time job out of blogging about that kind of waste.
I guess I base my "How They Would Spend Their Money" thoughts on my experience with working with a great deal of people in the district in the past. Instead of cutting corners to save money to be under the budget, they make sure they spend on some extra crap to make sure they meet the budget so they can get the same amount of money next year.
Granted, this was years ago, but considering little has changed in our schools since then, it’s hard to believe that their atitude has.