Elmbrook Board Goes for Broke

After playing the "pricing" game, the Elmbrook Board of Education will ask taxpayers to remit an average of $315.00/year increase in taxes for the next 20 years, by spending $100 million or so on renovating Elmbrook's two high schools.

The original proposal was $99.8 million, but Board member Schwei (obviously a clever fellow) asked the Board to knock $500,000 off the request so that the request would appear to be "$99 million" rather than "$100 million."

The thinking taxpayer may wish to know which "vital, critical, and necessary" part of the plan will be dumped along with the $500K.

The taxpayer might also ask whether there are any OTHER $500,000 portions of the plan which are not necessary--you know, to make the price sound even better.

The somewhat clumsy baiting of the hook has another effect: the Board will place another $9.5 million question on the ballot for increasing the space in both high-school gymnasiums.

So it's really a $109,300,000.00 expenditure, of which $500,000.00 is apparently unnecessary, and $9,500,000.00 for an addition to the addition (which doesn't really have to be integrated with the larger project, eh?)

Of course, that $315.00/year x 20 years assumes that the Elmbrook schools will not increase spending on other stuff--like faculty.

Uh-huh.