Ignorant Voters and Double-wides

One more West Bend school referendum post before I have to go mow the lawn (hopefully for the last time this year).

This story brings up a few thoughts. 

With her city facing a $119.3 million school referendum Tuesday, West Bend Mayor Kristine Deiss said people have a responsibility to know what they’re voting about.

What bothers her, she said, is that most of the referendum opponents she has talked to are not well-informed on the subject, and have not attended the information sessions the West Bend School District organized.

“Voting is a privilege, and along with that comes the responsibility to be informed,” Deiss said. “When people have spoken to me, and it’s in a negative fashion, the first thing I ask is, ‘Have you gone to an information session?’ The answer is usually no.”

Gee, does Deiss ask people who plan to vote for the referendum if they attended an information session?  Perhaps they are ignorant too and plan to vote yes. 

And when did voting become a “privilege” and not a right? 

But this is exactly the kind of attitude that ticks off a lot of people, myself included.  Here’s another example of it:

Without an organized anti-referendum effort, supporters struggle to find and educate the opponents, said Craig Farrell, executive director of the West Bend Area Chamber of Commerce. He said his fear is the referendum will fail because of “a group of people who are making a decision without having all of the information.”

It’s that arrogance that presumes that the only reason that people would oppose the referendum is if they are uneducated about the issue.  Most taxpayers don’t have the time to spend 2 hours at a meeting, 6 hours reading the plans, countless hours detailing every news story, hundreds of hours attending every school board meeting and such, but the presumption seems to be that if they haven’t done all of that, then you are just uninformed and should just vote how their betters tell them to vote. 

The voters have a right to decide how affordable they want their community to be and how much they want to spend on things like schools.  Elected (oops, appointed) officials like Deiss should spend more time listening to the people instead of telling them that they are too ignorant to make an informed vote.

Then there’s this:

The school already is renting trailer-classrooms for $80,000 a year…

Really?  I am only aware of one trailer over at McLane Elementary and it was donated to the district - at least according to the informational meeting that I attended.  Where are the other trailers?  Am I wrong there?  Charlie?  Kris? 

And why are we planning on renting trailers at $80,000 per year?  According to this, a 1,000 square foot modular classroom would only cost about $60,000.  So why rent them at $80,000 per year?  How many trailers are we getting for this $80,000 per year?

Posted by Owen at 1116 hrs
Politics + Politics - Wisconsin