Elected officials should make bond decisions
Taxpayer grumbling recently resurfaced in the pages of The Burgs. A story by reporter Mike Gangloff highlighted Montgomery County residents who are concerned about local debt burdens and want local governments to hold public referenda before taking out new bonds (“Bond referendum a mode of the past, or primed for return?” Feb. 24).
Readers of this paper needed to wait only a few days to see why that is a terrible idea. Gangloff last week reported on county supervisors’ authorizing money for schools, and his story illustrated the pitfalls of a county trying to come together behind specific spending (“Montgomery County School Board granted discretion over reserve fund,” Feb. 26).
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March 3, 2013 - 8:03 AM
The only problem is that this school board can’t be trusted to spend the money in a manner that is best for the students and the community. They seem to confuse what is best for the school system’s employees with what’s best for the students. They demonstrate this every time a fiscal need arises and one of the board members ties it to the need to give raises. How many times do we have to hear the phrase, “I can’t see asking for a tax increase to fund (insert issue of the day) unless we are also going to include a raise”? How many times are we going to listen to incessant whining about how we have to increase taxes to provide for the bare minimum necessities only to see a surprise surplus converted to bonuses at the end of each fiscal year? How many times do we allow the school board to demand a specific budget with no oversight, justifying the request by citing specific things they intend to spend the money on, only to later not buy those items, blow the money on something else and then refuse to account for how it was spent. If you think that doesn’t happen, ask them what happened to the 2 million dollars they “had to have” for new buses a few years ago. They spent the money, but they didn’t buy buses, and when asked what they spent the money, no one would answer.
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While I appreciate the civics lesson about how “it should work”, maybe someone could explain how NO oversight is good for the school system or the community and why the School board should be the ONLY county department that isn’t subject to oversight on how it spends the taxpayers’ money. The Montgomery County School Board wants a blank check and to answer to no one. Personally, I am thankful that Supervisors like Chris Tuck do want to hold them accountable for their financial follies.
The Scribd document is just gibberish (or are the plans gibberish and the documents is correct?).