PS on yesterday’s posts……

First, on this one about the eyes of the school board opening to some of the realities many of the rest of us have been aware of for years, and looking like they may actually grab the bull by the tail, as it were.

We neglected to make a point on this passage from the Forecaster article:

A repair plan proposed by Facilities Director Paul Caron last month called for a $2.5 million annual investment in school buildings.

As we noted, it is not within the realm of possibility for the school board, or the Department, to cut elsewhere to ‘find’ that money to ‘invest.’  Invest, as you know, simply means spend in these circumstances.

So in all likelihood, the Department, with board approval, will propose a $2.5 million increase in the annual budget for this purpose, along with the other usual increases.  At today’s going rate,  $2.5 million a year equates to about an 8% increase in the property tax rate.  Add that to the other increases always in the hopper, and you can’t help but be really excited!

                                   

Right?

Then there’s the second PS, attendant to the post on the Metro Bus possibility.

We wondered to ourselves what $200,000 a year is equivalent to if it was a payment on a bond issue.  So we checked with a competent authority in such matters, and here’s what we can tell you.

Depending on the interest rates, and the amortization term (10, 15, 20 years), $200.000 would ‘service’ bonded debt somewhere in the range of $1.5 to $3.0 million.  So $200,000 is nothing to sneeze at.

As we pondered this, we also wondered why consideration isn’t being given to chatting with Concord Coach, which already runs bus service between Portland and Brunswick (and points north and south of those two end points), to see if they might find interest in expanding their service to meet the same needs.

                         

Hell, who knows; they might even have a way to approach it that doesn’t require direct public subsidy. 

Not that anybody would find merit in such an idea.  After all, community is the name of the game, right?  Shared sponsorship, shared indebtedness, shared payments.

                                                

Gotta love it!  Even the shared pride part.

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