naperville-tv.com

Well, its (not) official.

School district 204’s cat and mouse game, to buy a cherished piece of real estate for a brand new high school, played out last night, after a special session headed by board president Mark Metzger.

“”The board has explored what options exist to build Metea Valley at the Brach-Brodie site and given the growth in material costs and anticipated labor cost increases, the only options for the building on Brach-Brodie within available proceeds involve substantial reductions in the building such as eliminating the pool or athletic facilities,” Metzger said. “We believe the community expects Metea to be a full featured facility making those options unacceptable.

A jury previously sided with the owners of the Brach-Brodie site and offered the land to 204 for $518,000 an acre.

“We have therefore concluded we cannot and will not buy the 55 acres for the jury’s price,” Metzger said Thursday following a special board meeting.

So what happened here?

My guess is that someone, or some collective group of people, presumably associated with school board 204, and all acting with limited information,( grade population growth, questionable projections);

1. hyped up the basic need case for a high school in the first place, ( vote for me !) while,
2. to support their belief, hired and paid lawyers, consultants and advisers, ( who all need to eat), and
3. sold the idea to taxpayers (twice) from a fear-based perspective. “overcrowding, bad learning environments, doom, gloom”
4. repeated the mantra, “For the kids, remember the kids!” over and over, until memories of the world before child labor laws were enacted,which overcame the audience.

A fear-based approach is never a good model to build a new investment around, especially when so much money is at stake. And the economics should match your original proposal for such an ambitious spend, right?

But here, the folks in charge of the spending, just keep on spending - presumably to help us get over our fears.

“School Board 204 filed a post-trial motion Thursday in DuPage County asking for a new trial in the condemnation case. “- Naperville Sun

Now our elected officials are using the cheap and cost effective court system, to right the evils of wrong judgments and win over the evil capitalist real estate trusts. Again, presumably for the Kids.

Metzger said the post-trial motion is based on several things, including evidence the judge let into trial, witnesses and instructions given to the jury. The Brach-Brodie attorneys will have time to respond to the motion and Metzger said it could be several months before it is all sorted out.

Sounds like somebody feels an injustice has been done, and its gonna take a long time to figure out a way to work the system again.

TAXPAYER BEWARE!

The first time this new high school bond came up, it was voted down.

Then, as the board did not agree with the general population, a new group started a campaign to right the wrong!( for the kids) -to get the badly needed new and glorious school.

Armed with enough legal paperwork and feasibility study materials to actually build the new high school foundation, the board made a new and improved case, targeting the (wink) key voter subsets and divisions, held another vote and magically, this time, it passed.

“Our staff looked into what possibilities we had and what happens if we purchased 55 acres on Brach-Brodie to have the building come within available proceeds,” Metzger said. “To make that number happen was much, much, much bigger than any of us anticipated.”

Was “much,much,much bigger” in the proposal to taxpayers?

Did it occur to anyone that if you were going to go to the taxpayer for such a large sum ( or any sum), that perhaps someone had better have a good estimate on the financing to build out ?

Are 204 taxpayers that easily sold by emotional sale jobs and slight of spreadsheet? Are checkbooks always open ?

Where is the fiscal accountability ?

A new High School may, or may not, be the right thing for 204.

But the curse of the case for building this new High School, under the original plan, is an old one, and for some strange and obscure reasons, its time has come and gone.

Move on 204, move on.

The Board should cut their losses, while they still can, to retain minimal credibility on this, and someone should be questioned as to the boards internal business process for proposing a tax increase in the first place on such faulty forecasting.

As the 204 board is to be a trusted guardian for education tax receipts ( tax payer money) and, ultimately for our kids education, its getting a little scary.

http://blogs.suburbanchicagonews.com/newsblog/2007/10/dist_204_back_at_square_one.html

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 22:21 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.