The lie is that “the state” will pay $22.5 million of the cost, and a program called Expanding Our Children’s Education and Learning (EXCEL) will pay $676,811 of the project. The taxpayers of SV supposedly will only pay the teeny tiny little bit left–$4.09 million.

There’s one problem with this fabrication. The taxpayers are the state! Do you realize that? Every public school district in New York does this! New York taxpayers are forced to pay some of the highest state income taxes in the country, in part so there’s a big pot of “community” money, and then school districts all compete to grab money out of that community pot. Some districts are better at it than others. The bottom line is, every penny of the proposed $27.3 million comes from New York State taxpayers. In essence, the taxpayers in SV will pay every penny of the proposed renovations.

Now, with that knowledge, does it make you stop and look at it in a different light, SV taxpayers? Are you ready to shell out not $4.09 million, but the entire $27.3 million? Do you REALLY need the renovations that are being requested? Especially at the beginning of a major recession?

If I lived in the SV district, my vote would be a resounding NO!

Technorati Tags: Broome County, Susquehanna Valley School District, school capital projects, school funding, school renovations, school taxes

According to an article in today’s Press & Sun-Bulletin (M-E prepares to break ground on $59.6M project), some brain-dead M-E parents are “excited” about the coming changes. They’re brain-dead because they don’t even know they are the ones paying for it! They think “the state” is kicking in 75% of the cost:

State aid and money from a capital reserve fund will pay about 75 percent of the work, district figures indicate. The owner of a home valued at $80,000 will pay an additional $124 a year, factoring in the STAR exemption, according to the figures.

Translation: 75 percent of the money comes from the pocket on the left side of your pants, 25 percent comes form the pocket on the right side of your pants, 100 percent of it comes from YOU, the taxpayer living in the M-E School District.

As has been pointed out numerous times by Matthew Tabor in his excellent blog on educational matters (Education for the Aughts), these capital projects are 100 percent paid for by taxpayers. People think the money is coming from some nebulous entity (the “state”), or perhaps they think people in other school districts across the state are helping to pay for it.

The truth is, even though these projects are all put into one big pot of money in Albany, the money is redistributed across school districts and in the end, it’s about a wash. That is, the money comes from taxpayers in that district and is given back to taxpayers in that district in a ponzi-like scheme so you don’t realize it was your money in the first place. The politicians then line up to be patted on the back for “bringing the bacon home” to their constiuents for captial projects like this one. Wake up people!

Technorati Tags: Maine-Endwell School District, school capital projects, school taxes, ponzi scheme

It seems CV taxpayers are tired of being an endless pocketbook for the thieves on the school board and overwhelmingly voted down the originally proposed school budget. As you may recall, there was a teeny-tiny, little “error” in the board’s planning and they underestimated last year’s budget by $3M and now need to make it up. Of course, cutting and scaling back is abhorrence for the teacher unions who stir up the little kiddies to appear on camera and cry about how their lives will be shattered by cutting a single dime from the budget. It makes me want to vomit when I see it.

The Press & Sun-Bulletin will now start running regular stories of how CV is hurting kids. It started today with the article CV looks to cut school costs - Field trips, equipment examined:

FENTON - Students in the Chenango Valley Central School District could be without field trips, enrichment activities and some clubs during the 2008-09 term under a contingency plan approved by the school board Tuesday.

That was the opening paragraph. Later in the article, we get this:

The board is considering a list of recommended cuts from Superintendent Carmen A. Ciullo, including:

* One unidentified teaching position. The district was already eliminating seven teaching positions.

* Field trips, including trips to Roberson Museum and Science Center, Binghamton Zoo at Ross Park, field trips to plays and other artistic performances.

* Enrichment programs, including Kopernik Space Education Center and Star Lab.

*A long list of equipment, including video cameras, Smart Boards and musical instruments.

The horror! The shock! Little Johnny or Suzie won’t get a brand new trumpet this year and will have to (gasp!) use one from last year. We may need to call child welfare services–it’s borderline abuse!

The CV school board adopted a contingency budget Tuesday night. According to state law, a school district can adopt a contingency budget based on the previous year’s budget PLUS an increase. (Never mind that last year’s budget was $3M too high. We won’t focus on these minor details.) Conveniently, contingency budgets don’t require a new vote by the people. The new CV contingency budget goes UP by 8.47 percent! It will raise property taxes 12.15 percent!! The previously proposed budget would have raised property taxes 14.4 percent.

Hey, it’s nice when people are dumb enough to approve having money stolen from their pockets, but if they won’t vote for it, New York State just takes it anyway–without a vote. Welcome comrades, to the People’s Republic of New York.

Technorati Tags: school board, school budget, property taxes, school taxes, school contingency budget, Chenango Valley Central School, New York taxes

I don’t agree 100% with everything in the blogs I link to. No two people agree 100% on anything! But I deem them a good read and worthy of your time, which is why I link to them.

One blog that I monitor is called “Right on the Left Coast: Views From a Conservative Teacher”. It’s written by a math teacher in California. His posts are short, to the point, and contain some great truths. I just read one today that I really like: How Generous That Government Is.

Here’s a line from that post that grabbed my attention. I don’t know off-hand, perhaps this is a famous one-liner from some long ago political philosopher. If not, it’s certainly a “new classic” and should be enshrined for all to see:

When government becomes the granter of privileges and not the guarantor of rights, tyranny exists.

That’s one of the best definitions of tyranny I’ve ever read or heard. Thanks Darren, for making me think!

Technorati Tags: conservative blogs, tyranny, political philosophy

Here’s an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article from 2006:

If we told you that an organization gave away more than $65 million last year to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Amnesty International, AIDS Walk Washington and dozens of other such advocacy groups, you’d probably assume we were describing a liberal philanthropy. In fact, those expenditures have all turned up on the financial disclosure report of the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union.

We already knew that the NEA’s top brass lives large. Reg Weaver, the union’s president, makes $439,000 a year. The NEA has a $58 million payroll for just over 600 employees, more than half of whom draw six-figure salaries. Last year the average teacher made only $48,000, so it seems you’re better off working as a union rep than in the classroom.

Here in New York, disgraced former Governor Eliot Spitzer had appointed a commission to make recommendations on controlling skyrocketing property taxes. I can tell you from personal observation in house hunting that property taxes in New York are double what they are for a comparable house just over the border in Pennsylvania–and that’s NOT an exaggeration. Nice house in PA? Plan to spend around $2,500 per year in property taxes. Here in NY? Easily $5,000–or more. And it keeps going up!

Later this week the commission appointed by Spitzer will deliver their report and recommendations on controlling property tax increases. Already the teachers’ unions in New York are moaning and groaning “it’s for the children” and that New York’s children will be at a severe disadvantage if we don’t drain every last dime from taxpayer’s wallets. It sickens me. In anticipation of a recommendation to cap property taxes and actually make schools hold the line and not increase spending each year, the unions are floating a shell-game alternative called a “circuit breaker”:

Teachers’ unions and other education interest groups are already on record against a cap. Instead, they back the circuit-breaker idea, which would limit what a person pays in property taxes based on income. Once property taxes go over a certain level, the circuit breaker would kick in. The state would pay 70 percent of property taxes over the threshold. (Press & Sun-Bulletin, May 19)

So, you can’t afford to pay obscenely high property taxes? No problem, “the state” kicks in and pays the rest. Umm, teacher…may I ask who, exactly, is “the state”? Oh that’s right…the state is the people of New York State. So teachers’ unions are recommending we reach around and pull the money from a different pocket on the same person. The point is: All of the pockets are taxpayer’s pockets! “The state” does not generate revenue on its own nor does it magically pull it from the air. “The state” can only tax people and businesses and take their money away from them to fund such cockamamy schemes. And a good portion of that confiscated tax money flows to liberal causes–our tax money put to good use, eh?

Wouldn’t it be great to work for a teachers union and make a six-figure salary and not have to worry about paying high property taxes?

Technorati Tags: teachers union, property tax cap, property tax circuit breaker, New York State, New York teacher unions, New York property tax commission

Oh, the name of the college I attended? It was a little NCAA Division 2 southern school called Liberty University. Today, it’s a big NCAA Division 1 school, and the debate team from Liberty has been number one–first!–in overall standings in the National Debate Tournament for the years 2005, 2006 and 2007. They beat out all other universities in the U.S., including Harvard, Yale and over 200 other schools.

This year Liberty was number two. And who, you may ask, was number one? Binghamton University! Hey, if anyone is going to beat out Liberty, BU is a good choice in my book. A hearty congrats to the team at BU for a job very well done. You can read about it here: BU honors its top-ranked, 22-member debate team.

Now, if we could only get our area high schools to start up a local debate tournament…

Technorati Tags: Liberty University debate team, Binghamton University debate team

Which leads me to ask, what is the board at CV, and the voters, thinking? According to one voter–he’s struggling with whether or not to vote for the new budget. The Press & Sun-Bulletin went out and found someone who’s actually thinking of voting for it–amazing is it not? (Read the story here.)

Why would voters pass a budget that raises their taxes 14.44%? They’ve bought into the line, “It’s for the children.” So much garbage has been foisted on taxpayers over the years with that argument. As in, if we don’t keep raising taxes every single solitary year, it somehow irreparably damages the little crumb-crunchers. They’ll grow up to become ax murderers if we don’t buy them brand new computers every year and pay the teachers ever higher salaries demanded by the teacher unions, dontcha know.

My preferred solution is too radical for most people: Stop funding public education, period. I know it’s too radical, especially in our almost-totally socialistic society. So I float a simple concept that all schools and all government entities who tax should adopt (in my humble opinion). Simply hold the line on your budget. Don’t increase it one penny for the next three years. See what happens. Yes, I know, I know. Fuel and energy prices are skyrocketing, food prices are increasing, and inflation in general is going up. But that’s the point. If you leave the budget where it is now, it forces you to do more with less–but not in a radical way. It’s small, incremental steps. Do with just an imperceptibly little bit less next year, and the year after, etc.

If it works, extend it another three years! Just keep the budget where it is and force yourself to make tough decisions–like every household in America does each day. Most people (with exception of those who suckle on massive welfare programs) figure out how to do more with less every day. We can’t just “tax” our neighbors and transfer their money into our pockets. The government does a good job of that already! No–we have to figure it out. So too should school boards, city governments, county governments–anyone who has access to our money. Figure it out. Be responsible for a change.

To the voters/taxpayers of Chenango Valley: Vote NO! And keep voting no until the board gives you a budget that holds the line. And throw them all out at the next election cycle and vote in people committed to letting you keep your hard-earned money. Quit falling for the old lie, “It’s for the children.”

Technorati Tags: Chenango Valley School, school budget, school budget vote, school board, school board election

Last night there was a “meet the candidates” night for the public to ask questions of the candidates for the CV School Board. It seems like a good idea to grill the people who hold the power to drain every last dime from your wallet, eh?

There are four people running for two open positions on the CV Board. By full-time occupation, they include:

• An insurance broker
• A Windsor middle school teacher
• A Vestal middle school teacher
• A supervisor with Broome County Social Services

Does anyone see a problem here? Three of the four people running are employed by the government! Two of them by other area school districts. Don’t get me wrong–they all have the right to run for the CV School Board (provided they live in the district) and if they want to, go for it. I do not know any of them personally nor even by reputation–my comments are not about the people running as individuals.

My concern is that people who already work for the government and are elected to government positions are much more likely to “go along” with higher taxes and increased spending. There is a conflict of interest. They are more disposed to be favorable to bigger government exactly because they work for the government and are paid by the government. Also, they belong to unions and are likely to be pressured, subtly or not so subtly, by their fellow union members.

I’d like people running who are tired of paying high taxes. People who punch a time clock and bust their humps every day for a paycheck and don’t like it when governmental entities, like school boards, are only too happy to drain their wallets (legalized theft).

My wish is that more “private sector” people were running for these open school board positions. I guess I’m just a hopeless dreamer.

Technorati Tags: Binghamton, Chenango Valley Central School, school board, school board elections, private sector

The Binghamton City School Board will put forward a budget with a “meager” 2.49 percent increase. Problem is, it goes up every year, and every year there are FEWER students attending Binghamton City Schools, and fewer taxpayers in Binghamton to pay for it because Mayor Matt Ryan and the Citizen Action Council (formerly known as the Binghamton City Council) are taxing the…stuffing…out of the fewer and fewer people who remain.

At a minimum, the budget should remain the same and not increase. Ideally (silly of me I know, I’m such an idealist), it should GO DOWN. But I would settle for remaining the same as last year, which was higher than the year before, which was higher than the year before that, which was higher….you get the idea.

When will this nonsense stop?!

Technorati Tags: Binghamton, Binghamton City School, school budget, school taxes

The federal government has no constitutional authority to fund or control our schools. We must abolish the unconstitutional Department of Education and return its functions to the states. By eliminating federal subsidies that increase costs, schools can be funded by local taxes; parents and teachers will be able to directly decide how best to distribute these resources.

Well said Mr. Grate! One of the liberal readers of the P&SB left a comment on the article condemning the notion of granting an education tax credit. The commenter equates tax credits–parents keeping their hard-earned money–with a subsidy. In the commenter’s twisted view of reality, people keeping their own money is somehow shorting or robbing other people. That’s good socialist thinking.

The real show-stopper, however, was this portion of the reader’s comment:

Then, the statement that the flat earthers should get their $5,000 to “home school” their children, which should not even be legal, much less subsidized.

Wow. Home schooling should be illegal–much less “funded” with tax credits. Folks, this is the way liberals think. All of your money AND your children belong to the government. Scary isn’t it? New York home schooling parents–keep a close eye out. Join and support organizations that will defend your rights, because the libs are coming for you. Don’t think so? One word: California.

Technorati Tags: David Grate, Maurice Hinchey, 22nd Congressional District, education tax credits, home school, California home school