We’ve had three children graduate from the Orcas Island School District. Although we have always voted for the Maintenance and Operations Levies for the public school and have supported the school in many other ways we plan on voting “NO” for the school bond. We believe that the current plan is still too much for this community at this time. Because the community has voted “yes” for every MAINTENANCE and Operations levy and yet the school district hasn’t displayed using the maintenance portion of the levy responsibly, the district has lost credibility with many of us.
The district needs to focus on which problem that it faces is the most critical, and then ask the community to help with that with a more appropriate bond amount for the current economic situation. This is a time for taking a hard look at our needs, not our wants. We have a very generous community but this is asking too much. If the district asks for the appropriate project then they will most assuredly get a community consensus of “yes” versus a marginal vote of approval if any.
With the county cutting down to bare bones for the next few years, along with many households, $27 million is just not viable for the current economic situation. We all know that taxes on the federal and state level are going up. Our business, which has a perfect record with Employment Security, had its unemployment taxes double this year for example, not to mention the sunset of the Bush tax cuts, the changes to the medical system, possible state income tax, talked about VAT, etc.
Clyde Duke
Two thoughts, Clyde.
First, who paid for the school bonds during the years that your children were in school; I suspect that it was our respective parents and their peers?
Secondly, if your concern is about the tax burden that we must all bear as our community matures, perhaps the Fire Commissioners can roll back the bonds to build the Deer Harbor facility and so forth.
In a vibrant, growing community, we all, over multiple generations, must contribute to the growth of our infrastructure.