{"id":11370,"date":"2024-06-26T21:29:37","date_gmt":"2024-06-26T21:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=11370"},"modified":"2024-06-26T22:06:02","modified_gmt":"2024-06-26T22:06:02","slug":"west-bend-school-board-spitballs-referendum-amount","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=11370","title":{"rendered":"West Bend School Board Spitballs Referendum Amount"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This post originally appeared at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bootsandsabers.com\/2024\/06\/26\/west-bend-school-board-spitballs-referendum-amount\/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=west-bend-school-board-spitballs-referendum-amount\">https:\/\/www.bootsandsabers.com\/2024\/06\/26\/west-bend-school-board-spitballs-referendum-amount\/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=west-bend-school-board-spitballs-referendum-amount<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtoncountyinsider.com\/dollar-amount-discussions\/\">FFS<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u2013 After discussion on maintenance needs, the board returned to the discussion of the referendum total. \u201cWe kinda need that price point so we can combobulate that accordingly,\u201d said Wimmer.<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 An initial total of $110 million was proposed as a starting point.<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 \u201cTypically, the minimum would be $80 million to get a new Jackson K-5 built,\u201d said Donaldson. \u201cAsking for extra money to do something that has to be done anyway; if we\u2019re going to ask for the money just to make it easier to balance the budget\u2026I think that\u2019s wrong.\u00a0 We do have a capital maintenance budget if we have to shift stuff around or using the money we already get, using it the right way then\u2026 $100 million gets us $20 more million anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cSo you\u2019re telling me if we don\u2019t get $80 million, we\u2019re leaving all the schools open,\u201d said Donaldson.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cNo, you can still close schools,\u201d said Wimmer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m talking about,\u201d said Donaldson. \u201cThose things have to happen anyway \u2026 just to be utilizing the district the way it should be. We are way under capacity at schools. Silverbrook has half the school closed down in sections because they don\u2019t have enough students to fill them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cOnce we know what Phase 1 is \u2026 and if it fails \u2013 I\u2019m still going to close some things, voting \u2018No\u2019 doesn\u2019t mean I will keep your school open,\u201d said Wimmer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe purpose of this work session is to pick a number, whatever it is and then you\u2019re coming back to us with (a list) of this is what you will get for it,\u201d said Zwygart.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Notice how this discussion is going. Instead of defining a list of critical needs, adding up the cost, and going to the taxpayers with the request, they are starting with the number and working backwards. They are trying to gauge how much they think they can bamboozle the taxpayers into approving and then seeing how much they can do with it.<\/p>\n<p>Having followed this district for over 20 years and seen referendum after referendum, they are running a playbook. They are flush with cash and could free up more cashflow by just closing some buildings and right-sizing staffing. They haven\u2019t done that. Instead, they are fishing around for the right number and the right messaging to see what they think will cobble together enough votes to pass a referendum. They just want to spend some money and take credit for \u201cdoing something.\u201d This is not about improving education.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"et_social_bottom_trigger\"><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.bootsandsabers.com\/2024\/06\/26\/west-bend-school-board-spitballs-referendum-amount\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=west-bend-school-board-spitballs-referendum-amount FFS. \u2013 After discussion on maintenance needs, the board&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-boots-sabers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11371,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11370\/revisions\/11371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}