West Bend resident/retired securities rep dishes on referendum

My thoughts exactly.

Neil and Barb Thompson nail it on the head.


OK, so now we’re down from a $100 million dollar referendum to an $80,785,086 million one. Boy, what a relief ! I am sure this really impresses the families that are in danger of losing their jobs, homes or the ability to pay their rising utility bills, grocery bills, gas bills, car payments, etc. Oh, by the way – get this: It’s only going to cost an additional $10 per month (based on a $175,000 home) on your property tax bill. Don’t forget, the cost gets higher if your home value is higher. Remember, this is a 20-year payback. You can be sure that within two years there will be another referendum, and so it will continue.

Has anyone figured that the incoming tax revenues are already showing signs of dropping? We would believe home and business failures are continuing in our community. In fact, the economy has worsened considerably since the November referendum was canceled. Unemployment, bank and company bankruptcy figures have sky-rocketed. Bailouts from the government keep coming and there is no end in sight. West Bend’s unemployment rate has soared to 10.3 percent.

If the School Board hadn’t taken the tactic of going for “all or nothing” in the original $200 million referendum (plus possible cost over-runs) and would only have addressed the most critical problems at that time, perhaps they would have had some success. The reasoning behind the “all or nothing” referendum was reported to be that district Superintendent Pat Herdrich and the board didn’t want to slight any of West Bend’s schools. This resulted in a 2-1 defeat. Well, they got “nothing.”

Our high schools were offered a $250,000 “gift” for a new fitness center. The catch was the board and taxpayers had to come up with an additional $300,000-plus to build it. The person in charge of the deferred maintenance fund offered to take a $225,000-plus of the budgeted maintenance money and use it for the fitness center. This seems to us like “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” This fitness center seems like pork.

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