Archive: Opinions

EditorialOnly two people (not connected with the library) showed up at a public meeting designed to explain and answer questions about the Lansing Community Library Center (LCLC) charter, which will impact taxes and be voted on May 15.  Nobody showed up at the Village of Lansing public meeting about the budget.  Well, I can understand that , because the Village is lowering taxes, not raising them, and there was an April blizzard that night.  However, next Tuesday (May 8) the Lansing PTSO is hosting a "Meet the Candidates" night.  If this year is anything like last year, attendance there will also be sparse.  That would be very bad for Lansing.

Last year the school board faced challenges, but two incumbents were running unopposed so it is understandable why you may have felt that you didn't need to attend the candidates night.  But over the following year those challenges became graver.  And this year we have three candidates, all with different points of view, only one of them an incumbent.  Two of these people are going to affect your children, your community, and your pocketbook.  Two of them will either meet the challenges or make them worse.

Everybody is talking about taxes, and the way the upcoming tax levy rise came to be 7.4% higher than last year's is troubling to may residents.  Evidently it came from a combination of a miscalculation that nobody caught until it was too late and a policy of drawing from reserves to artificially deflate the tax rate.  When you compound that with rising property tax assessments you end up with a very difficult situation for all homeowners, but especially those on a fixed income.  If we vote this budget down, we will likely end up paying more, as the total budget is below the figure that the State will impose if the budget fails twice.

But that is not the only challenge these two people will face over the next three years.  At least some school board members, if not all, have acknowledged that the district is faced with regaining the community's trust.  That is certainly going to be a challenge, because the community registered what many say is a lack of trust when it voted down both the first proposed 2006-2007 budget and the capital project.  Accusations about who has violated this trust have been bandied about by the many stakeholders, but whatever the truth of it is, the Board Of Education has a PR problem that desperately needs to be solved.

Another challenge is illustrated by the failure to pass the capital project, despite an up front effort to involve the community in putting the project together.  Simply put, the project was split between physical plant and security needs and programmatic needs.  But while most people agreed on the security and physical plant needs, everyone had a different opinion about the programmatic needs.  And people were daunted by the price tag.

The result was a serious challenge for the new school board.  Leaky roofs and failing boilers aren't getting any better.  Some have criticized the board for not seeing to maintenance over the long haul.  Others say that State aid is structured so that it is more advantageous for school districts to replace these things than it is to maintain them.  But the upshot is that neither is being done, and the prospects look bleak in an ever-increasing tax environment.  These two board members are going to have to think outside the box to come up with affordable, long-term solutions.  And 'think outside the box' is going to have to be something real, not just an expression.

Ask any two people to project future school populations and you will get any two answers.  Some voted down the capital project because they see the overcrowding in the high school as a temporary bubble.  Others voted against it because they didn't like that it only addresses current needs without expanding for future needs.  Others just didn't want to pay any more.

Taxes, trust, and capital needs are only three of the challenges the winning candidates will face.  It's not going to be an easy job.  (Actually it's not a job at all -- school board members work tirelessly for no pay.)  More than ever it is critical that we put the right people in those two seats.  

The only way to do that is to learn as much as you can about each one before May 15.  Then make up your own mind about which two are best suited to lead the district and prevail over these difficult challenges.  The Star tries to do something like that with our candidate interviews, but there's nothing like being in the room with the candidates and getting the hard questions answered.

We all have impossible schedules, families, jobs, commitments.  This vote will affect all of those things.  That's why you should be in the High School cafeteria next Tuesday at 7:00pm.  Meet the candidates.  Listen to them.  Talk to them.  Then vote for the two you think are best suited to influence your children, your community, and your pocketbook.

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