Priorities

There was a mayoral candidates debate in town tonight. Time to start thinking seriously about which candidate to vote for. There are three serious contenders and one fellow who showed up with a few shots under his belt. His entire platform was ‘cut taxes’ and ‘this is fun’. Then he almost fell out of his chair.

The other three had interesting platforms. One wants to reform City Hall—a shake-up and new competent blood. We could use it. Another wants to focus on public safety and disaster planning, which is, of course, a timely subject. Our public safety commissioner was let go and the job was added to the fire chief’s job. As a part time thing. It would be prudent to rethink that since we live within the 10 mile radius of a nuclear power plant. The third candidate wants to fund the schools from the bottom up, rather than the top down. In other words, fund the classes and teachers first, then the administration and the extras. Maybe we could elect all three candidates.

One of the interesting factoids to come out of the debate, however, was the school district’s weird priorities. Much has been cut this year including language and the stringed instrument music program at the middle school. Now, the music program was a part time program and had been funded at a paltry $7500 last year. But, it turns out, the district had no difficulty budgeting $15,000 for bottled water for the teachers’ lounges.

Excuse me?

Look, I know our public water is possibly the worst smelling and tasting water in the United States (smells and tastes like frog pond water with mildew added), but if you’re dying of thirst, the water fountains (bubblers) are readily available. You just hold your nose and gulp. Otherwise, ask the teachers to kick in a dollar or two a week for bottled water or, gasp!, let them bring their own bottles of water to school with them. I know it’s a nice perk, but at the expense of the kids? When there isn’t enough money to go around for doing everything a school is supposed to do...teach stuff...how do we justify something like free bottled water for the staff at twice the cost of an eliminated program? Well, I surely can’t justify it.

Betcha the current mayor and the school superintendent are gonna hear about that one tomorrow. I wonder what other similar items are in the school budget that no one knows about.