The strange world we live in

You kind of get the feeling that all’s not right with the world when a 17 year old becomes a viable mayoral candidate for one of the yuppiest towns on the planet. And we’ve got one such young lad. He just graduated from high school, has a scholarship to Antioch College and has arranged with the college for a two year deferral, should he be elected. Since he’s not old enough to vote, he had to talk the town into giving him special dispensation to file for his candidacy, one of the requirements ordinarily being that he must be a registered voter to file. He will be by the time the election rolls around, but not yet.

What’s even stranger is that he’s beginning to gain rather a lot of popular support, even though his parents are none too thrilled with the idea. I don’t know that it’s necessarily that his views are any better than a more seasoned candidate, but this town is at a dreadful pass. I think we’ve reached the desperation stage. The current mayor is, perhaps, the most hated man in the state and the other mayoral candidate, an 11 year police veteran, seems to have his problems with with the residual effects of suing the city in a civil suit. Those are our choices for the moment.

The current mayor is sort stuck between a rock and a hard place. He had the unenviable task of trying to balance the 2008 school budget which had a shortfall of $1.5 million. Between the cuts in monies coming from the federal government and the state, our town doesn’t have much jingle in the coffers. That’s not hard to notice, with the size of the potholes in the streets growing large enough to fill and swim in.

A few weeks ago, there was a special election to vote on a tax override for the school system. It failed miserably because, I suppose, we’ve gotten used to the idea of having our cake and eating it, too. After the override vote, the school district superintendent gave up trying to find ways to cut the budget and dumped it in the mayor’s lap.

His solution was to close two of the three elementary schools, increase the size of classes, filter the elementary school students into the one remaining elementary school and the rest into the middle school. Also the budget cuts eliminate 30+ teachers, and foreign language at the middle school level. And those were just the big ones. The fees for sports jumped again as well as the fees for the privilege of riding the bus to school for those who are not in the walk-to-school zone. I think one of the art departments was virtually eliminated, too.

I’m not sure what choices he had, really. They were clearly choices between horrible and more horrible. And that’s just this year. We’ve been underfunded for the past 5 years and this is the just one more in a string of bad years. I can only imagine what will happen with next year’s budget, since I have my doubts whether the federal government or the state government will be any more forthcoming with dollars.

Thank you Mister Bush and Mister Romney for pretty much bankrupting the towns. Don’t imagine it’s a whole lot better in other towns across the country. Infrastructure is not financed and operated on fairy dust, fellas. But let’s cut some more taxes. Makes everyone feel so good until it doesn’t.