There are three reasons the school bond issue failed. TRUST. TRUST. TRUST.
Despite comments to the contrary by some proponents, in political terms, the vote was not all that close — 56% to 44% is a significant election margin, particularly given the timing of the election and the fact that there was no organized opposition to the bond issue.
Also, the bond issue was pretty much doomed from the beginning because the school board and citizen committee members exhibited a lack of understanding of the politics of the vote, which further led to a lack of political strategy needed to convince voters to take a chance and trust the school board.
The school board had lost the trust of the taxpayer and chose nevertheless to be guided by architects from Topeka who have no understanding of local politics. (And note to school board and citizen committee members: The new superintendent’s debatable success with similar elections in the past will not make up for his lack of understanding of local politics.)
Why the lack of trust?
1. The failure of the school board for the past 20 years or more, in even the simplest of terms, to budget enough money to take care of basic repairs, maintenance and improvement issues.
2. The prevalent attitude of the school board when confronted with a budget
problem/crisis to seek first a taxpayer bailout instead of sharpening their knives, cut spending and reprioritize goals. (Think of the $400,000-plus bond issue that horribly failed in a bond election a few years ago.)
3. Reneging on their promise to taxpayers that no taxpayer dollars would be used on the FAST building when all they had to do was ask the FAST committee members to go back and do more private fundraising. Instead, they took the easy way out and robbed the cookie jar as small as it was then. The school board utterly failed to understand how devastating this decision would be on the ability of the taxpayer to ever trust them again. (Also, read 2 above again.)
What suggests their lack of political understanding and political strategy?
1. Local taxpayers are scared, particularly people on fixed incomes. The crash in oil prices has everyone very worried about the near future. They are tired of government at all levels raising taxes as a first resort. Yet, according to proponents of the bond issue, if you didn’t support the bond issue, you were told you insufficiently cared about our children’s future. Or to paraphrase the recent opinion by the Hays Daily News Editorial Page editor, if one didn’t vote for the bond issue one simply didn’t or couldn’t comprehend the issues involved in the vote like those who chose to support the bond issue. Not exactly the kind of arguments that illustrate any empathy for the taxpayers.
2. Using the local sales tax as a funding mechanism with apparent little regard or
thought as to how that would hamstring the City of Hays’ and Ellis County’s ability to deal with current and future revenue shortfalls should the local economy suffer from an even more severe downturn.
3. Asking the taxpayers to turn over $90-$100 million all at one time to a school board that has exhibited a fairly complete failure to manage their spending prudently. Taxpayers simply couldn’t trust the school board to spend this enormous sum of money efficiently and effectively. As they say in the sports world in this kind of fantastical situation: “Come on, man!”
School board and citizen committee members say they will return to the drawing board and come back for another vote. Unless they want history to repeat itself, it would be wise for them to focus on what is politically doable. Their next attempt at this demands a substantially different approach.
This of course would require a strategy based on a more thorough understanding of what wins and loses these types of elections. It would also require seeking input, not from out of town architects or superintendents, but from local individuals who understand politics, have experience in political elections and can help create a political strategy to give the next school board vote a real chance of success.
Returning to voters with more or less the same proposal in terms of both projects and money will more than likely lead to the same result. And a lack of significant change in priorities, strategy and attitude could very well spark an organized challenge the next school bond vote similar to the one that helped defeat Ellis County’s poorly designed bond project, commonly dubbed the Taj MaHadley project.
Tom Wasinger, Hays
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court has upheld the government’s “net neutrality” rules that require internet providers to treat all web traffic equally.
