This letter to the editor by Carol Heger takes us back a bit to illustrate the yawning gap between the rhetoric of the current board members and their actions. The spending doesn’t have anything to do with education. It has to do with supporting a political constituency with your money.
On Monday night, Sept. 27th, the West Bend School District (WBSD) held its annual meeting. Once again, the so-called, self-identified “conservative” school board members are proposing to raise the tax levy. This will be the third year in a row, if this resolution is approved, that the school board has increased the tax levy. In the 2019-20 school year, it was raised 7.15%, in 2020-21 it was raised 6.21%, and now the board is proposing a 7.25% increase.
In addition, the annual meeting revealed that the district’s gross total expenditures proposed for the 2021-22 school year are to increase 7.12% from $98,504,627 to $103,376,400. This increase in spending is happening when enrollment has declined about 200 students from 6,034 last year to an estimated 5,824 this school year. (In the last 10 years, the district has lost about 1,000 students.) This increase in spending and the property tax increase are happening when the schools all over Wisconsin are flush with federal stimulus funding.
She’s absolutely correct from top to bottom.
What’s wrong here is that citizens have given government bureaucracies the power to determine their own worth. What you’re seeing is that even conservatives (when given the chance) will rationalize that they’re worth more today than they were yesterday. We’re seeing this at every level of government.
Money corrupts.