Vote NO - Comments
Search this area for recent comments by residents Against the upcoming referendum.
posted by Candidate at
3:04 PM
About
This blog was established in the spring of 2006 to challenge Prairie Grove School District 46's $18M Referendum. There is a lot of good information that is still very relevant to the November referendum.
Please post your feedback into the topic that most represent the theme of your comment.
Previous
- Something For Nothing? - Read Comments as well
- Taxpayers must defend against broken bonds
- Is this how you’d borrow money?
- Premium path takes you above debt limit
- Schools rake in more than voters OK
- D-46 must give where it's gotten
- Ballot Question on March Referendum
11 Comments:
Voting NO on March 21st. Too early to make a decision. Too many unanswered questions.
I went to the Public Info Session held this past Saturday, March 4, 2006 to learn that--
$0.24 Bond and Interest Fund Rate can change and WILL CHANGE if the if the EAV projections and developments don't happen as scheduled.
At tax time - BOND & INTEREST REPAYMENT COMES FIRST
If .24 isn't enough-- it goes up and keeps going up-- .27?? .29?? .35??
THERE IS NO MAXIMUM LIMIT ON THIS RATE
The bond rate is not effected by the Tax Cap law as the other funds.
Who shared this information with the public? The school's bond consultant from JP Morgan.
School officials KEPT QUIET.
The consultants from JP Morgan and PMA were very professional. They gave direct answers to questions, and shared their charts and calculations with the public.
Maybe the actions of their own consultants will shame school officials to be COMPLETELY HONEST with the taxpayers. We want the truth, the whole truth. The future of our children's schools and the future of our community is at stake.
By
Anonymous, at 8:52 AM
excerpt from NWHerald http://www.nwherald.com/CommunitySection/319271685307190.php
...Although board members did not publicly express their political views, District 46 board President Laura Domoto said Monday evening that holding such a meeting raised ethical questions.
"Why would the village get involved in questioning the information that the school is putting out?" she asked. "I don't understand why the village of Prairie Grove would be doing this."
...Swanson also expressed disappointment that his informational letter was used in district literature distributed to parents.
I'm Voting NO. The School board thinks it's unethical to question the false assumptions that they are using to dupe the community into approving this referendum. The assumptions are dead wrong and it’s going to cost us all in the long run. Vote NO!
By
Candidate, at 5:49 AM
Rick Swanson was very disappointed to see D-46 using his comments out of context to further their political agenda. It has become crystal clear, that this school district is purposely misleading the community to get this bond issue pushed through. Is Laura Domoto basically telling the village board to shut up? Since when does D-46 control the community board? Is D-46 trying to control when we can, or cannot, have village board meetings? I am now going to vote NO.
The leadership of D-46 has completely lost all of my trust. I now realize the meeting I sat in Saturday morning at the school was a complete one sided dupe presentation. Folks, it is time to make some leadership changes in D-46. The strong smell of D-46 corruption is looming, and it is a sad state of affairs. Color this community disappointed.
VOTE NO!
By
Anonymous, at 6:12 AM
For Laura Domoto is question ethics is the pot calling the kettle black. Laura should explain the implementation of the 2002 Tax Referendum where the D46 took and continues to take every year more than was advertised to the taxpayers. Ethical?
And since when is a public meeting by the village to get information a bad thing? Had Rick Swanson confirmed the district's projections, the meeting would have had equal value.
D46 and the village need to work together. D46 and the village need to get the truth to the taxpayers. Thank you village for holding the meeting on Monday.
By
Anonymous, at 6:58 PM
This is my first comment on this site. Thank you for the opportunity to express concerns anonymously.
I will be voting no unless the school starts opening up and being forthcoming. Why do they continue to promote the fact that this will not cost us one red cent? They cite the fact that the Bond & Interest fund rate will remain at 0.24. Read the ballot question again, carefully. There is NO mention of this rate at all. That's because there is no legal maximum rate for this fund. If we don't get projected revenues and increases to property values, the money to pay off the bonds will have to come from somewhere ELSE. They can and must transfer money from other funds in order to make scheduled payments. This means taking money from the education fund, transportation fund, operations & maintenance fund, etc. Our kids' education will suffer if their plan doesn't work out like they say it will and they WILL come back to the taxpayers for yet another referendum.
Not One Red Cent? Think again, ask questions. If it seems too good to be true, it probably isn't true.
By
Anonymous, at 12:30 PM
Mr. Breseman, you are consistent.
First it was your illegal threats to the school to hold impact fees hostage if they did not give up the right of way on Rt.176 which YOU demanded. Then you illegally threaten to hold the land hostage. Why all the abuse and destruction when you could simply grab the right of away on the north side of 176 as it goes commercial?
What is your problem? Why the arrogance? Why the ongoing, unrelenting ax to grind with our schools? Will you stop at anything to get your way? The school had to spend countless, unnecessary hours in meetings, hire consultants and spend thousands of dollars defending your personal attack. I’m tired of your arrogance and spending my tax dollars on your personal agenda!
Now you have the audacity to host a public meeting last Monday stating the purpose “is to allow the greater community to plan for the impact of these developments over the coming years.” What nonsense! The bottom line is the letter the schools sent out on Friday quoting Rick Swanson caught you off guard. The letter created a hurdle in your plan to kill the referendum. So you immediately called and asked Swanson to rescind the letter, which he declined. Then Duda threatens Rick Swanson with “read between the lines” emails to be in our village hall on Monday with virtually no notice. Now you have the consultants, Swanson and the NW Herald as your captive audience. Then you carry on with your political game of “catch” with Rick Swanson….I’ll ask the questions Rick, you just answer them. Swanson is a smart man and did a great job being your pawn because he had no choice. He has millions of dollars at stake and needs to maintain positive relationships with our village officials to keep his developments on track. Regardless of your personal agenda, he needs to side with you because his personal agenda is to sell land to developers as quickly as possible.
I want to see the agenda that was published for this meeting. I want to see the prior meeting minutes showing that “exaggerated growth” has ever been a topic of a village meeting. I know there isn’t any because you took your personal agenda to the village hall. Your self-serving, unethical leadership, abuse of power and illegal use of taxpayer’s money to fulfill your personal agenda is going to stop. I am not going to allow my tax dollars pay for professional consultants to support your personal agenda to bury our schools. The States Attorney has been contacted and investigations on your ethics will follow. Enough is enough.
By
Anonymous, at 8:39 PM
Since when is it unethical to have a public forum to obtain information relevant information about an important decision that a community is attempting to make? Who in the community would contact the States Attorney and request an investigation that such a meeting was unethical? Who would imply that both the largest local real estate investor in district 46 and the local newspaper are pawns? Who would make these claims and offer no real evidence to support why the community should vote yes to the referendum? Who is allowing misleading and miscontrued information to create fear around voting no? Who would know the States Attorney? Would the blogger above please help us all and identify that person? Perhaps this person would share important information that was missing from their post such as relevant, unemotional and accurate information about the "all or nothing" strategy being pursued by the school board. If you have this information, please post it....it will take leass time and be more relevant than making threats toward a fellow citizen trying to get to the truth and reality.
By
Anonymous, at 12:09 PM
Vote No
I believe the last tax referendum was supposed to take effect the following tax year because the School Board said they didn't have enough time to get into this years tax bill.....well guess what they lied again. It WAS on that very next tax bill several months later.
Seems like Steve Todd and his other cronies are still up to badmouthing Mike from the previous post. Grow up.
VOTE NO
By
Anonymous, at 9:06 AM
if you check class sizes in the past few years the numbers seem to be going down. I don't understand the crowded classroom thing. The second grade averages 18-20 per classroom.
By
Anonymous, at 5:27 PM
Did you see the information coming from the School and YES PAC? Who are they kidding with this stuff?
About the flyer mailed to residents,
1. If safety is soooooo important, why wait 2 years and build a new school? Why not get a traffic light put in at the school so traffic can be controlled now?
2. They continue to mislead about the growth rate of children. They start their chart at 2005-2006 when the school received 50 more kids. But they don't tell you that in 2004-2005 the school had 35 LESS kids and 2003-2004 the school had 9 LESS kids. Net change from 2003-2006 is only 6 additional kids overall. Some of these kids are transported to Fox River Grove for special education. This is hardly a trend of rapid growth...it is no growth! Make you wonder about what other information is misleading.
3. Class sizes...who are they kidding about the "one-to-one instruction will be lost." How are they measuring that? Right now the larger class sizes have aides but are they being used wisely?
4. They also want to use our tax money to lock up low interest rates now. How about giving us our tax money back and letting us invest it? I don't pay taxes so D46 can run an investment fund.
5. They talk about temporary solutions (mobile classrooms) and in a previous flyer talked about using janitor closets, storage rooms, and open pod space for classrooms. Talk about trying to panic us? They can build additional classroom off the existing elementary and junior high school as a permanent solution, not a band aid. In fact expansion of the existing buildings is in their plan anyway so why not do it first. One D46 plan was to build 9 elementary class rooms behind the library (@25/kids per classroom, that's 225 kids). At the same time D46 is looking to add 3 classrooms per junior high pod for a total of 9 more classrooms (handling an additional 225 kids). That's 450 kids total. With options like these, why are we rushing to construct a building for 600-900 kids first?
6. They are claiming that it is more economical to build a school now due to expected increases in interest rates and construction costs. However, they don't tell you that taking premium bonds will cost over $10MM more to pay back than if we waited until some development begins and EAV increases first.
The school's flyer ignores the fact the sewer will not be in place for at least 2-3 years so once the school is built, they won't even be able to flush the toilets for a while!
And who is going to build when they can't flush? No flush, no houses, no houses...no great influx of kids, no EAV to cover the bond repayments, no kidding!!!
By
Anonymous, at 3:03 PM
Tom,
The school did not stick to their "budget". At the time of the last referendum, the Board pledged in a resolution to the community to keep spending at 5% per year. Look it up! Get the minutes.
Since the referendum passed, spending has increased over 10% per year per student while enrollment increased from 1048 to 1054 students. Yes, they paid off the tax anticipation warrants and that was the purpose of the referendum. But with the extra money they sure didn't worry about the pledge to restrain spending to 5%. A lot of the money went to the teachers in incentive programs and adminstrators. The kids did not get new computers or a lot of new books.
I agree with the comment about Laura having the gall to question the village's ethics of having the meeting with Swanson. The meeting was to get the developer to tell us about the timing because the school and the village had different understandings. There was nothing unethical about trying to get at the truth. She may be a nice person but she was out of line with that comment in the newspaper. It is too bad no one from the school attended the meeting. The timing of the build out is critical to D46's decision and I would hope they would have attended to clarify the situation, especially in light of Swanson's letter to the school.
By
Anonymous, at 7:21 PM
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