There were apparently ten million reasons to vote against Harrisburg School Board members Jon Loos and Dan Hensch in the June 17 election.
They and other school board members apparently hid the costs of ten million dollars worth of vital work and materials on the new high school now being constructed west of Harrisburg.
Ten million dollars over budget!
And only when do we find this out? A week after the school board election.
This is unacceptable. It is wrong. It is representative of how badly our school board has broken down and how in the dark we citizens have been under this school board and this superintendent.
And what do we get from the culprits of this mess in the press when asked about it?
Lame duck Loos blames me and you in the pages of the Argus Leader:
“To get the bond to pass, they ended up cutting out many parts of the project that needed to be done,” he said. “There is a mindset amongst the public. ‘Let’s vote it down until they cut out what they don’t need.’ They needed this stuff.”
Thanks, Jon. It’s our fault, not yours, that the March 2007 bond issue was misrepresented by ten million dollars.
Then there is Jim Holbeck, the district’s superintendent, with his long mea culpa in last week’s Champion trying to compare our ancestors’ investment in a beautiful state capitol building in Pierre with the board’s conniving and hiding the ball in building a suitable new high school for the district.
“So will the new high school and surrounding facilities be built for the money from the bond issue? Not even close. But we are building it right, with the promise that we will not increase tax levies to do it.
We will need to use Capital Outlay Certificates to fund the amount of money beyond what the bond election and Tiger Nation are supplying.”
Jim, you do have one thing right about the real price tag: “Not even close.” And that’s the problem. You see, even though we live in and around Harrisburg, we’re not stupid. We know when the wool has been pulled over our eyes. And you are now still trying to pull the wool over our eyes and tell us it’s really just nighttime. I doubt you’d buy this argument from a naughty fifth grader who gets sent to your office for a little counseling. And we’re not buying it from you. It is indefensible.
The taxpayers didn’t know that we’d have to use Capital Outlay Certificates when they voted on the new school. That wasn’t part of the public plan. Now, the taxpayers get stuck.
This isn’t about Harrisburg district patrons not wanting what’s best for our children. We do.
The district has eventually supported bond issues for new schools when they felt satisfied they were getting facilities they could afford.
This is about a dysfunctional school board and an enabling administration that don’t trust the public. We saw it with the debacles last year with the force-outs of Jim Hargens and Keith Huber. We saw it with a number of long time faculty leaving because of all the chaos. But obviously, the lack of respect of patrons, students and staff went much deeper than that and into important financial matters and planning. We were mislead.
Because of the hidden agendas of a few, the rest of us get to pay and pay and pay – and the mistrust among patrons, students and staff on the one hand and the school board and the administration on the other only deepens.
Let’s hope new board members Penny Rydberg and Josh Sisson can sweep away this mess and return this district to the “good old days” where decisions were made in public and we all knew what was going on –and how much we had to pay.