[speedgibson] Speed Gibson: The Rest of the (Referendum) Story

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Posted by Speed Gibson:
The Rest of the (Referendum) Story
http://speedgibson.powerblogs.com/posts/1218694557.shtml


   "[1]Educrats Never Sleep" reports The Big Stink over at the Freedom
   Dogs. As I've noted, the Robbinsdale Area Schools are giving us
   another chance to raise our taxes this November. The exact ballot
   language and the amount to be sought are now being developed, and as
   "Stink" reports, they hired consultants to test the waters. The
   consultants did a telephone survey of 400 registered voters about two
   weeks ago and reported their findings to the School Board at its
   August 11th Work Session.
   For the record, I disagree with most in the MOB who generally vote no
   on public school operating referendums. I typically vote yes for
   reasons I given before and will again near election day.
   "Stink" was particularly critical of the District hiring Public
   Relations help with our tax money to get still more of our tax money.
   It's not a fair fight, even if David did beat Goliath last year, for
   David has to rely entirely on private, voluntary contributions.
   I was at that Work Session and received a copy of the survey results
   in the form of a 31 slide Powerpoint presentation. Yes, it cost us
   thousands of dollars, but the fact that that money didn't provide any
   useful information, well that's the rest of the story.
   What did the survey tell us? Asking for less money improves the chance
   of passage, the threshold being around $200 a year for an average
   homeowner. The laws involved don't really allow us to ask for much
   more than that anyway, and a curious non-linearity in the formulas
   says we get the most net money if we stop a little short of the
   maximum levy. In other words, we paid for what common sense already
   told us.
   They tested some language, but the results were again predictable and
   therefore not helpful. For example, over 90 % agreed that "investing
   in the quality of the local public schools is essential if we are to
   maintain a safe, thriving, vibrant community." Oh, I'd love to take
   that statement apart word by word, but I'll simply ask: so what? I
   think The Big Stink, Chad the Elder, and I would agree with this, but
   is spending still more money on methods that don't seem to be working
   an investment? And wouldn't investing in the local students produce
   the same or better results?
   Finally, having endured well over a thousand such presentations, I
   have to say that this one was second-rate. There were too many slides
   and too many graphs. The text layout was annoyingly small for no
   reason even with half the page unused. The presenter had to spend
   several minutes explaining a couple of the confusing graphs. Were I on
   the Board, I would have asked that they at least re-do the
   presentation before paying the bill. It was that bad.
   The District needs to be a better shopper than they apparently were
   here, for it could make a voter question how they buy everything else.

References

   1. http://freedomdogs.com/component/content/article/3019-educrats-never-sleep.html