“A little bit of this, a little bit of that” is what you’ll find here. First and foremost, opinion, commentary, and analysis you simply won’t find in the dead tree media. The Blog was started to offer “other side” thoughts on local governance and related subjects, unconstrained by the boundaries of the “free press.” Useful information, diversions, humor, and other distractions from the daily grind will make regular appearances as they occur to me, and as others contribute them.
I meant to wrap up yesterday’s post with a reference to the current street quip that “buying a newspaper is like paying someone to lie to you.”
And then I thought about extending the concept to Bowdoin College, at least as exemplified by the assertions of Professor Klingle.
So we have an opportunity for reader creativity. Please come up with a witty corollary that captures the essence of “buying a Bowdoin College degree for $200,000 is like paying someone to blah, blah, blah.”
You know those scenes in championship football games where a bunch of mischievous players sneak up behind the coach, and shower him with a cooler full of Gatorade?
I’m beginning to worry that one of these days, when I’m somewhere out on the town, a couple of Brunswick’s finest agitpropists will sneak up and shower me with a cooler full of Kool-Aid, hoping to wash every smidgeon of skepticism from my body.
Good luck with that. The pranksters can save it for the sheep, who will surely appreciate it in this hot weather.
Do you remember Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins? What a world of animal diversity he showed us to and led us to appreciate!
Here in Brunswick, wildlife diversity is nowhere as great, but we do have more than you might think. We have several kinds of sheep, we have ostriches, we have strutting red-feathered peacocks (‘I know all the candidates for the supreme court’), we have two-faced chameleons, we have single-winged grackles (almost without exception, left-winged), we have moon-bats, we have gooney birds, we have loons.
Now that I think of it, we have more species than one can list. We can’t forget jackals or crazy foxes. Nor the slithering worms, snakes, and slimy snails.
And let’s not ignore the hood-winking owl, or the ivory tower denizen, it’s close cousin.
So much for our editorial indulgence and amusement. Tonight we will focus on the ostrich, the sheep, and the ivory tower denizen. They seem to perfectly ‘animate’ the recent budget climate.
So which is superior in the animal pecking order – the ostrich, the sheep, or the ivory tower denizen? Is one ‘more equal than the other?’ In a related question, we wonder whether anyone has ever seen an ostrich in sheep's clothing, or vice versa?
Ok, stop distracting me; I want to get to the point. There is no question in my civilian mind that the voting on the school budget, held yesterday, will show overwhelming approval, and on the basis of less than a 10% voter turnout.
I knew this would be the outcome, no matter what anyone said at any hearing. Emotions run high in this domain. Fine; I’m prepared for that. What I am not prepared for, however, is a complete absence of truth and objectivity, especially when it comes to local residents affiliated with our shining tower of truth, justice, and the American way. (Ok, forget the American way bit.)
Last Friday, The Ostrich carried a letter by Matthew Klingle, an Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies (whatever the hell that means!) at Bowdoin College, begging for support of the proposed school budget.
In it, he used phraseology that included this:
"precarious state of our public schools nationally and in Maine"
"an impoverished school system"
"the importance of well-funded and accountable schools"
"at the very moment that we're recruiting prospective employers and investors to come here"
The good professor also cited "budget cuts over the past five decades," and how they intensify "spirals of economic and social disruption."
As you should know if you follow us here on a regular basis, we compile data on budgets and spending to back up whatever positions we take and points we make. And on this last assertion, ‘budget cuts over the past five decades,’ the data shows that the writer is so far off base as to be certifiably deceitful and wrong, or if you prefer, the more polite contemporary term, ‘disingenuous.’
If this be academic freedom, it must mean freedom to make up your own facts. If this is a highly educated academic’s understanding of what is going on locally, we have to wonder what he teaches to the mushy young minds of teenagers spending $50,000 a year to purchase a Bowdoin sheepskin.
Maybe getting a PhD (as I almost did), or a faculty appointment at an elite leftwing liberal arts college, requires surrendering your moral compass, so you can follow the yellow brick road wherever your superiors and mentors tell you it leads.
As for us, we sure as hell wish the faculty would keep their unsubstantiated and cockamamie thinking to themselves. We’ve got more than enough crazy stocked up here all by ourselves; we don’t need any more handed down from on high.
Even if the very long neck of The Ostrich makes that easy to do.
As we related some weeks ago, The Ostrich declined to extend us credit on our subscription billing, which we had asked them to do as a quid pro quo for us, the taxpayers, extending them credit on their property tax accounts.
Well, actually, they didn’t ‘decline’ to do so; they just didn’t respond to our request at all, which we went out on a limb on and took as a decline. We had hoped they would ‘be bigger than us,’ given their frequent pontifications about community, fairness, social justice, etc.
All for naught. Which gave us a chance to demonstrate what we mean by being the ‘bigger’ party in such affairs. And so we have.
Since the appearance of one of our columns on their pages would boost circulation, and thus provide revenue that could resolve their tax delinquencies, we reached out in a selfless act of charity. We recently made a donation, and while delivery has not begun again, they did have the good sense to print our work. One giant step for Side, one small step for The Ostrich.
We’re well aware that most of you don’t see The Ostrich, so in a further act of charity, we’ll posting our effort here, on pages you can afford to read, and more important, can’t afford not to read.
Testing the ‘chain of argument’ for budgets and school excellence
Published: Friday, May 27, 2011 3:13 PM EDT
School budget theatrics over the past several weeks bring this quote to mind from Carl Sagan: “If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.”
Advocates of the proposed budget seem unfamiliar with such insight, thinking more with their hearts than their minds. Let’s examine their “chain of argument.”
Premise: “School excellence is important to the attractiveness and vitality of a community.” OK.
Asserted conclusion: “A necessary and sufficient gauge of school excellence is how much we spend on them, and how much we increase what we spend.”
Stop! The links to this conclusion don’t ‘work.’ No objective evidence was presented that spending equates to excellence. And there is plenty of evidence that other things, like teachers credentialed in their subjects and merit-based compensation do.
First link: “Brunswick’s schools are widely known as excellent; in fact, it’s one of the main reasons we moved here.”
Stop! This doesn’t work either. No evidence was presented to support this claim, nor was any offered to prove that our teaching staff is excellent. In fact, a school board member stated that our high school is on the “failing schools list.” Test scores over the years have been undistinguished. There is no tangible reason to believe Brunswick schools are more excellent than others except say-so and the pleadings of parents who have already placed their children in them, and who would be plagued with guilt and self-doubt if they said otherwise.
Second link: “Brunswick’s schools are ailing and at the brink of ‘utter decline’ because of ‘severe cuts’ in the budget; we’ve got to make it stop, or people won’t think well of us.”
Stop! Per-student spending has grown continually, increasing by more than 60 percent in the last seven years, and per-student property tax support has grown by about 50 percent in the last five years. In the new budget, property tax support of the schools increases by 6.3 percent, even though enrollment continues to decline. For those who moved here because of our excellent schools, when did they stop being excellent, and how could you tell?
Third link: “The best teacher we’ve ever met is being let go because of extreme cuts to the budget.”
Stop! This much-revered teacher is being let go not because of budget cuts, but because we have a union relationship that prizes seniority and high pay, while ignoring teacher competence and performance. We don’t prioritize excellence in our teaching staff on behalf of our children, and we don’t get rid of the deadwood when the time comes. We pay the worst teachers the same as the best. The loss of the “best teacher” is proof positive of a flawed accord that prioritizes union members over students. Enforced mediocrity is the result. ‘For the children?’ I don’t think so.
Fourth link: “Teachers are underpaid, and I would gladly pay them more; and I would gladly pay more in taxes.”
Stop! A year ago, I compared teacher pay to that of the top tier of town officials. I found that in 2008-2009, 60 teachers (about one third) made more per week than the top five earners for the town: the police chief, the fire chief, the finance director, the town clerk and the public works director/town engineer. Teachers reach those pay levels without any basis in merit or performance; all that matters is years on the job. The teachers will likely get all of the $1 million in new property taxes, if not more. As to paying more in taxes: I can’t imagine any town official who would stop you from writing a check as large as you like to the town.
If you consider every act in this budget season, you begin to realize the School Department put on an elaborate piece of theater that might be called “Lamentations — The Musical,” in which they strummed the minds of the public and used the Town Council as an ensemble chorus.
They began with a 12-percent-plus increase over the current year budget, or more than $3 million higher than now proposed, ensuring that the opening acts would feature high drama, inspire great anguish and gnashing of teeth, and mobilize a sizable contingent of mothers, fathers, and children to plead with great emotion at public hearings. The plainly unreasonable opening total guaranteed everything that followed would be demagogued as “deep and severe cuts.”
The final budget approved by the School Department made it through unscathed. The public was played to a fare-thee-well, as was the Town Council. If they don’t realize it, perhaps it’s time to wonder whether any were uncredited script consultants in the stage production.
For these reasons and many more, I will vote “No” on the budget referendum, and I encourage you to make a stand and do the same. It’s time for reason to triumph over unfounded emotions.
============================================
Which proves, we suppose, as the schoolies are fond of saying, that ‘you get what you pay for.’
Bang head against wall; aye, sir. Three bowls full.
Your humble correspondent (yah, sure!), always convinced that one more tilt at the windmill (the classic literary kind) might do the trick, clip-clopped over to Council Chambers tonight. There we gave voice to “the impossible dream” yet again, illustrating the very essence of the term ‘quixotic.’
You might even think of us as P. C. Poppycock de La Mancha. (Note to those seeking a diversion – the Sancho Panza billet is currently vacant; please submit your C.V. if you have any interest.)
Herewith we present the text of our statement. But before we do, we should add that the School Superintendent stated (after we rode away) that the Teachers’ Union has approved the contract for the coming school year. He cited some figures to suggest that the town made out better than the teachers, and that would be an outcome that defies all the projections we’ve made.
Rather than endorse that view here and now, we will wait until we see the contract, and then render our analysis. If our projections turned out to be wrong, we will respond appropriately.
Now on to the text of our statement:
Just a couple of quick points:
Point 1:
If we had increased per student costs for the last 10 years by 5% each year, a generous figure, our budget for the year now ending would be $4.5 million less, which would be a reduction of at least 15% in our property taxes. Funny, that’s the figure we were promised some years back when we approved LD 1; yet, somehow, it never happened.
And the budget for the coming year would be $3.5 million lower. That would be a decrease of about 12% in our property taxes for the coming year.
Pretty soon, we’d be talking real money. We might even be able to spend some of that real money on fixing our roads, many of which are in awful shape.
Sobbing and wailing over so-called ‘budget cuts’ are staged crocodile tears, meant, when you cut to the chase, to convince us to keep increasing compensation for the teachers just because they show up for another year.
Looked at another way, if increasing per student spending by 40% in five years, with nothing to show for it, isn’t enough, just HOW MUCH would be enough??
Oh, and WHY haven’t we been told about the new contract yet???
Point 2:
The “best teacher ever” calamity, whether the parents speaking up for her realize it or not, is a superb illustration of our dysfunctional and one-sided relationship with the teachers union. Still, we deceive ourselves into believing we’re all about ‘excellence.’
Protecting and rewarding teacher mediocrity trumps school excellence and doing the very best ‘for the children.’ The interests of the students, the community, and society be damned.
We celebrate, protect, formalize, and prioritize longevity over excellence. How can excellence even enter the discussion when we have no performance or merit measures?
The “last in first out” policy when reducing staff serves only the interests of entrenched union members, not those of the children and excellent teachers.
If we were committed to excellence, like these parents want us to be, they would demand reform and fix this problem; it is why an excellent teacher gets sacrificed, while less capable ones are retained, and with an increase in pay and benefits
Until those crying excellence demand this reform, all they demonstrate is naiveté and lack of critical thinking. Instead of placing the children first, they play right into the hands of the union. And that includes, I might add, those who suggest seniors sell their houses if they don’t like their taxes going up ‘for the children,’ and for ‘school excellence.’
In the face of the foregoing, the theatrics and rhetoric we have witnessed in recent weeks is just so much agitation and propaganda. It doesn’t take much to see through it, and it would be most inspiring to see some leadership from our elected officials on these very obvious and very detrimental circumstances.
The slow roll continues. After last year’s bending to the budget environment then by deferring a general increase, the prediction from School Department officials was that the two year contract would be re-negotiated by January of this year. Oops!; that didn’t happen; we wonder why.
Ho-hum. All Brunswick School Board members who believed it would, and even worse, told local taxpayers to buy into it, have shown how vulnerable they are to teachers’ union tactics. Including the Board Chair, who wept in public over the budget ‘cuts,’ as if there was actually a cut.
The School Board, tough negotiators they are, unanimously (is there any other way?) approved the proposed contract at their meeting in early May. They then sat in on the joint budget workshop with the Town Council on May 9th, at which not one detail of the contract was revealed, but many tears, figurative or literal, were shed by various parents, board members, and real estate agents.
Fast forward to the Council meeting on May 16th, and you have essentially the same circumstances: not a single detail of the contract disclosed, but testifiers speaking of the devastation of our school system and Brunswick’s desirability as a hometown because we weren’t increasing the budget by $3 million compared to last year.
Recent inquiries to the School Board and School Department administrators about contract status have netted the same results they always do: we have no information; it’s not under our control. Nothing like the employees running the company, right? Now that’s leadership! It’s a damn good thing we have elected officials watching over things for us!
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. The longer the establishment hides the details, the more you can be sure the union will get the entire $1 million in property taxes, or perhaps even more.
And the way things are going, you can also be sure that the details will be withheld not only beyond the budget approval meeting the Council will hold this Thursday, the 26th of May, but in all likelihood, until after the June 7th referendum on the School Budget.
Why subject themselves to public exposure, which might threaten landslide approval of the school budget by one or two votes? Far better to have the budget win approval, and then allow the local press to cover the new contract as a minor note in mid-section when nearly everyone is gone elsewhere.
‘Let me be clear’ (where have we heard that before?); we are extremely cynical about the way this entire process works, how the public is manipulated, and how officials who ought to know better and be standing up for us are neutralized.
On the bright side, we are coming to believe that there is a national consensus building that our public education system, or as I call them, government schools, are in decline, and that major reform is mandatory if the ‘American dream’ is to survive.
Here’s some casual reading to illuminate this view:
The following are reflections after attending the May 16th budget hearing, at which I said my piece. I watched a number of others do their thing as well, although I left before the meeting was over. You already know that if you read the previous posts.
Since the process is drawing to a conclusion, this is a good time to review what has taken place and what the strategies and tactics have been.
If we were to sum it up, the overarching premise forwarded by just about everyone, with a few exceptions (like this reporter) is that unrestrained school spending equates to excellence. More specifically, spending growth, no matter what the underlying parameters (like enrolment, for example) might be, is the necessary and sufficient indicator of commitment to excellent schools ‘for the children.’ And we should add, the desirability of Brunswick as a place to live.
Or in simple terms, school spending = excellence; nothing else matters. No measure of school performance, no measure of teacher merit (other than kids and parents saying “we love her”), no attention to responsible stewardship of the school facilities rises to the same level.
This is most curious. Those speaking from the heart (instead of the brain) on such matters steadfastly avoid any objective measures or analysis of our circumstances. Almost without exception, they are not qualified to make such judgments. They have no credentials for saying a teacher is excellent. They only have, as one parent said, ‘anecdotal evidence,’ shaped by a desire to have more and more taxpayer dollars devoted to their children, which is understandable, but irrelevant, all other things being equal.
Unfortunately, all other things are not equal. Still, public rhetoric focuses on blubbering about ‘severe and degrading budget cuts,’ and professed willingness to pay more in taxes and pay teachers more.
OK; throw a bucket of ice water on my head, so I get back to ‘the bidding.’
Here it is:
The School Department’s early publicity featured a budget in the $36 (or was it $37?) million range, calling for a 12% plus increase, in the face of years of massive growth in per pupil spending, continued enrolment decline, etc. This is reminiscent of state budget theatrics and the “structural deficit” game. Jack the numbers up really high early on, and then talk about all the suffering unfortunate, seniors, and hungry children when the numbers come back to earth. In the end, politicians take credit for ‘making hard decisions.’
How dare they start off with such a number, given budget history? Spending and revenue are different sides of the same discussion. We now know that the School Department has $3.5 million in reserve accounts to spend in each of the last two years!
Wow! Looks like they’ve been sand-bagging us, inflating the budgets, and then under-spending to bank the difference forward! Thanks a lot, ‘pubic servants.’ Many of us would have preferred to pay less in taxes, so that we could ‘bank’ the funds in our own reserve accounts!
So when the School Board finally approved a $33.3 million proposal, exactly the same as last year, it is decried by the usual suspects and dramatis personae as containing ‘excessive cuts,’ driving our school system ‘into decline,’ steering potential residents elsewhere, tanking our property values, and other sober and dispassionate characterizations. (And let’s not forget the School Board Chair shedding tears in public over the awful, awful, distressing ‘cuts.’) Oh, please!!
Our guess is that virtually none of the aforementioned suspects knows bupkis about prior year budget levels. And we’ll bet none of them have ever looked at a teacher’s contract. If they did, it would cloud their emotions, and possibly connect their hearts to their brains, and that wouldn’t be good, would it?
Instead of facts and logic, we heard lots of talks from Daddies and the real estate broker about how “excellent schools” make for a more desirable town and higher home values (higher prices, more commissions, fewer riff-raff moving in?), and studies that prove it, without citing one piece of data or any facts that demonstrate our teachers and our schools are, in fact, excellent.
In fact, just the opposite; mourning that an excellent teacher is being lost in the ‘cuts;’ guess why, folks? And if your answer doesn’t start with the letter “U,” go back to square one.
Maybe the RE lady was thinking ‘tell more old folks to put their houses on the market, so I can get the listings! Rah rah to the mother that suggested two weeks ago that this would be an appropriate response to concerns about increasing property taxes. How delightful!
To back off the $36 million/12% increase opening bid, they decided to close a neighborhood school, for a savings of what…..half a million? And then they decide to ask for a $200K study for renovating that school, and we will bet you donuts to dollars right now that the study says it will cost $10 million or more to make the school useful and fitting for Brunswick, but the best bet is really to tear it down and build a new one, for say, $25 million.
So closing Jordan Acres saves the amount the teachers will get in raises this year. Community values? Are you kidding?
Which leaves us with a few questions for the ‘our schools are going in the toilet crowd:’
If the schools were excellent when you moved here, say 5 or 6 years ago, spending far less, and far less per student, why aren’t they excellent now, when they are spending far more?
How did you know they were excellent then, but know they are not excellent now?
How can raising per student spending by 40% or more in recent years be seen as excessive cuts, and decline?
How can raising per student taxes by 50% in five years be labeled the same way?
You simply can’t be had and manipulated any better by the School Department, and the town has been had and manipulated just as effectively this year.
One more thing; what about Mrs. Stinson being let go? “Best teacher ever,” according to two parents, and we have no reason to doubt them. Here’s a suggestion: why don’t you ask the Union Head, the School Board Chair, and the Superintendent why “the best ever teacher is being dismissed,” instead of one of the slugs or one who ‘phones it in.’
On the school budget and related presentations, that is.
If you saw the School Superintendent’s presentation at the joint budget workshop on May 9th, you know that it was an artful dodge, a slight of hand.
Woe is me; we’re cutting these positions, we’re backing off on materials and maintenance, we’re closing a school, and our revenue shortfalls are catastrophic. We’re increasing class size, and packing the new school beyond capacity. And we expect next year to be even worse.
At least that’s how the script might have read. But as to the single largest component of the budget, the fastest growing and most unmanageable, it was dismissed briefly as ‘work to be completed.’
Nothing to see here folks; move along please. No details, no status, no boundaries, no principles. No indication of how the Administration and School Board are in charge and working on our behalf. Because they aren’t.
The entire presentation should have been about nothing but the teacher compensation package. And how it leads to larger classes, fewer materials and repairs, and all the other woes. It is the undeniable force, the ‘cost beyond our control,’ the elephant that no one dare challenge.
Why do I say this? Because all the hand-wringing and tough decisions in the presentation were a description of the fiscal torture necessary to make sure the teachers’ union could get another million in compensation, all extracted from the taxpayers by compulsion, with no merit, no performance measures, or any other justification other than another year has passed.
Seen in this light, the entire process, the School Board’s unanimous vote, and the administration’s complicity all amount to nothing more than shilling for the union. If they keep it up, before you know it they may be expected to pay dues!
And teachers want us to be all verklempt because they have to buy pencils and paper? Back up the truck; they gobble up all the money for themselves, and then complain about supplies? All while the general populace undergoes suffering far beyond pencil and paper levels.
Meanwhile,nothing about how our ‘officials’ are making sure that revered teachers like Mrs. Stinson, publicly praised as ‘the best kindergarten teacher ever,’ are retained, while lower performing teachers are let go, regardless of seniority. No introspection about how painful it is to cut staff, but it’s a chance to improve staff quality overall by “getting rid of the deadwood,” as it was called in my career.
They couldn’t say that, because it would be lies, all lies. The union has a stranglehold on employment security and pay levels, and the children, who don’t pay union dues, will just have to suck it up and deal with it. As will the taxpayers, who, by contract, will have to pay more and more regardless of the results, because that’s what ‘fairness for working families’ means.
School excellence? Are they serious? Do they really want us to believe this is a model for creating excellence? If they do, the word excellence doesn’t mean what it used to. Imagine how good our schools could be if those in charge were motivated by excellence (in the old sense) and nothing else!
This is all taking place in the midst of ‘the great recession,’ as the media now calls it. Yet those involved in constructing local budgets and negotiating labor contracts seem blissfully unaware of reality. Understandably so; it can be so constraining.
Indulge me for a moment, if you will, as i review the fiscal context for our current circumstances.
The state derives the vast majority of it’s revenue from the income tax and the sales tax. These revenues have been in decline for years, and for a very simple reason. The populace has less of a revenue base from which to pay these taxes.
Income tax revenue is down because citizens and businesses are earning less income; it’s that simple. Sales tax revenue is down because people are buying less and businesses are selling less, because citizens and businesses have less income to spend.
So while everyone else is forced to do with less, Brunswick property taxpayers are shamed into coughing up an extra million so the teachers can do with more. Houses are dropping in value, some are being foreclosed on. But if you’re a teacher, the union was able to hide those realities.
And at the same time, avoid an opportunity to raise the overall excellence of our teaching staff. Those being terminated are the most junior and lowest paid, no matter how talented and motivated they might be. Those being retained are the most senior and highest paid, no matter how untalented and unmotivated they might be. So the average compensation per teacher will go up several more notches, thank you very much
And they expect us to do it every year, no matter what else is going on.
Next time, Board and Super, don’t come to the town until you know what the increase in teacher compensation packages will be and add up to, and then make your presentation one chart: how much more we need because of the union contract.
In retrospect, nothing else matters. “Solidarity forever,” Mrs. Stinson, until your job threatens more senior members’ raises. Then it’s “seniority forever!”
“Stronger together?” Funny how that only lasts until you are an impediment.
And pencils and paper be damned. Let them use the ones “with the union label.”
We looked again on YouTube to find something more contemporary about ‘the union label.’ The item below is the best we could find. Enjoy.
And good luck and Godspeed Mrs. Stinson, no matter where your excellence may take you.
Closing note: if you think I’m ticked off about things as they’ve rolled out this year, Bingo! From where we look at things, the greatest impediment to ‘school excellence’ is the teachers’ union, because their highest priority is protecting the worst first, making sure that performance and merit are irrelevant to employment, retention, and compensation; and squeezing as many dollars as they can out of local taxpayers. Even those who should sell their houses and move so the union can have its tribute.
As always, those who disagree have full access to this outlet, as long as they adhere to our very low standards.
At the joint Council/School Board workshop last week, on May 9th, many of the comments, as mentioned previously, included gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands over lack of town commitment and investment in ‘excellent schools for the children.’ As a matter of fact, at some point it seemed like the ceiling tiles would start falling.
One new school board member made it clear he didn’t run for the office to manage the school enterprise, but to make sure schools have enough money. He spoke about ‘serious budget reductions.’
From what? From the more than $3 million increase (or 12% plus in some reports) over last year’s budget? Did he really think $36 million was reasonable when just 7 years ago, when we had 800 more students than now, we spent $27,600,000?
I’m beginning to think those ‘in charge’ have no sense of budget reality in this town, especially as it relates to the School Department. So I recently compiled such a history going back to the 99-00 school year, and distributed it to the Town Council, the School Board, and others. In particular, it shows the per pupil spending over this period, per pupil property tax support, total spending, and system enrollment. I have posted this summary to scribd, and you can look at the information here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/55747379.
It also includes a ‘what if’ analysis that postulates a generous 5% a year increase in per student spending over the time period shown, and what such a growth rate would have yielded in budget totals. You’ll see that the budget for the coming year would have been $27 million for the coming year, instead of $33.3 million, for a savings of over $6 million. Under the current rule of thumb, that would yield an 18% reduction in our property taxes.
That’s a lot of money, in our less than humble opinion.
Then there was the fervent concern about what ‘others would think of Brunswick,’ related to the ‘people move to Brunswick because of the schools’ theory discussed in KKKK-1: “Selling Brunswick.”
Heaping shame on those who examine budgets and taxes with their brains instead of their hearts is standard fare from those who believe no amount of taxation is enough, and that the only figure of merit for schools is how much they spend and how much they pay teachers. You’d think we’d get used to it, and we are. But we’re no more willing to let it go unchallenged than we ever were.
The Ostrich ran a story yesterday on the budget hearing held Monday night, May 16th, by the Town Council.
In it, they reported on your correspondent as follows:
“Crestview Lane resident Pem Schaeffer advocated for reduced school spending and objected to, among other issues, budget discussions taking place before negotiations about the current teachers contract are completed.”
Since I read from a prepared text, it’s easy to go back and prove that none of my words specifically advocated for ‘reduced school spending.’ And if you watched the xtranormal version of my statement, you know that.
Alternately, you can watch the VOD playback of the meeting if you prefer independent corroboration; you can find it here.
As to the comment on negotiations not being completed, as of last week, the School Board had reportedly approved the proposed contract, but the teachers union had not. I stated as much, and said that the details were being withheld from the public. The report above is off the mark here as well.
I notified the reporter of the errors, but have yet to receive a reply. Perhaps The Ostrich will run a correction. And perhaps they paid their property taxes today.
Now that the school budget escaped without a scratch on Monday night, or even the threat of one, we wouldn’t be a bit surprised to hear that the union wants negotiations re-opened, rendering the earlier vote by the School Board irrelevant. And why wouldn’t they?
The Town Council and the School Board are clearly putty in their hands, and by extension, so is every town taxpayer.
At least until you move out of town in self-defense, thank you very much.
Over the years, we’ve often suspected, and alleged, that the editorials published in The Ostrich were provided by partisan interests, and yet presented as if they were the work of the editors.
The examples of this syndrome are far too numerous to mention, but any discerning reader of their offerings over the years knows this is the case.
This week, the editors decided to come clean on their lack of originality.
Two consecutive editorials are admittedly derived from the efforts of the Maine Center for Economic Policy, a radical left wing non-profit think tank with offices just steps from the Statehouse in Augusta.
The first had to do with planned cuts to taxpayer funding for MPBN, and ran yesterday.
The second has to do with Governor LePage’s first biennium budget.
Both are full of the demagoguery MECEP and the other entrenched left wing extremists in Maine are known for. As we might expect from those who have had their way for nearly 40 years, virtually without challenge.
Fair enough, we suppose. But isn’t it time for the editors at The Ostrich to think for themselves?
And isn’t it time for The Ostrich to get its property tax accounts paid up, rather than lecturing the rest of us on ‘doing better?’
