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From: ivankrpan
Category: General Discussion
Date: 31 Jan 2003
Time: 18:20:49 -0500
Remote Name: 216.148.246.134
The second attempt to pass the referendum failed with 55% of the voters voting NO. 70% voted NO the first time. The first vote had an organized group of NO voters, the second vote of NO voters was not organized and only dropped 15%. No matter how you evaluate the vote, the fact is that not all of the NO votes were developers! Many of the NO voters were DeKalb teachers who know that this referendum truly does not address real classroom needs. They make you think it is due to growth. Our biggest spike of growth was when Malta came over, but they came over with 2 schools and over $2million in monies. Where did that all go? A lot of the work to be done at the schools involves life safety issues, state and federal compliances that need to be met (Title IX), new programs necessary to teach our children today that wasn't necessary to do in past years. More office space for more administration at the schools themselves have taken valuable space. Infill from older neighborhoods that haven't borne children for years now have become starter homes with families who are the children of many of the long time supporters of this community. Not those who just moved here recently. An ever growing Hispanic community that has invaded the older neighborhoods resulting in the school district changing room assignments and hiring additional teachers qualified to teach these children in Spanish. A huge pre-school program that takes up much space from our school buildings, by which by State law, we are not obligated as a community to support. If we have to put blame for the school problems on somebody, new development is not the culprit. Many of these new homes are providing many tax dollars to support infrastructure repair in the older neighborhoods. Infrastructure in the new developments have a much longer shelf life than the older parts of town. Lower maintenance into the future meaning more tax dollars going to repair the older infrastructure of this town. If this new development wasn't happening your taxes would be skyrocketing or nothing would get fixed. Ask people from Wheaton or even closer in Malta. They lost their schools and their infrastructure has seen much better days. Their only hope for a fix is a proposed development. That is why Cortland is encouraging growth, they need the revenue it will bring. It is survival for these communities. Do you honestly think if you stop development and growth that you will solve your problems. Services that we expect to get will only continue to get higher. How will you pay for the raises to the teachers teaching our children, the police officers and fire fighters that protect us. The ambulance service that is their when we need them. You need growth to offset those costs. But the important thing is that it must be a controlled growth. Leaders that we elect must also do their job or they must be replaced immediatly. That is for all levels of government that spend our tax dollars. I am not a builder/developer who just popped in to get rich. On the contrary, I was born in this town and made a decision to live in my home town. I am worried about the spending and how it effects my childrens future. I have 5 children that I am worrying about and I have to worry about whether they'll ever be able to live here in their hometown. I also worry about the people I remember when I was young and growing up, the real ones that supported this community over the years. The ones that did what was needed when needed and didn't look to blame others for things they had to build. Now that they are retiring, we want to hit them harder in the way of taxes. They've done enough. Don't blame the people buying my homes either. They are paying dearly for lot prices and impact fees. They continue to pay double to triple the real estate tax than homes in the older neighborhoods are paying in taxes. People are complaining about high taxes now, be honest and figure out what they'd really be. It's not just here, it's everywhere. Government is not being held accountable for their actions, the ridiculous ways they spend money. If you could really see how the school district is spending money and some of the things they are spending it on, you would be mad as hell like me. Lastly, I am for the best schools we can have, if I was truly the greedy builder/developer we have all been grouped into, I would be in full support of this referendum. It is absolutely not the right plan for this community. To be honest there is no concrete plans to vote on. Our school district has an awful track record when it comes to spending dollars and this is not one of their finer moments. But I guess that why we have a right to our opinion and the right to VOTE.