It's Time for a Complaint  |   Home  |   Tyranny in Pakistan

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

1. We are not renting anything like that.  We have one trailer that we own.  If the referendum does not pass we will be deciding how many trailers to buy.  The $80,000 dollar figure is pretty close because of transportation and hook ups required for school classrooms.

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 03, 2007 at 1421 hrs




2. Also, i would say that if someone is not taking the time to attend a meeting or read the material then yes they are uninformed.  That is because it is such a huge and domplex project.  Not because people are unintelligent.

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 03, 2007 at 1423 hrs




3. So how many times do you transport and hook-up that trailer, Kris?

   Every YEAR?

   Posted by dad29 on November 03, 2007 at 1648 hrs




4. This is the first time that I have logged on to a blog.  And it is what I expected.  Some facts some non facts.  People hanging on every single word that someone else tells them.  I can’t say that I haven’t done that through the past year since I started attending informational sessions for the facilities projects.  On Tuesday I will follow my heart.  I am not into the bickering back and forth all day about the facts and opinions of myself and others; instead I will vote on what has to be done.  I think everyone can agree that they worry about the future ... we can’t predict if our taxes are going to be raised again for some other reason - we can’t predict if we are going to really have to put trailers on our schools hence chasing away potential homebuyers (who wants to live in a district where their children attend schools with trailers or double shifts).  I can’t say what will happen- all I can say is that I hope that it doesn’t come to this.  As much as we want to say that we can continue to send our children to these; some day it WILL catch up to us—at least that’s what my instincts tell me (they not be facts to you, but they are usually pretty key in telling me what to do).

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 03, 2007 at 1737 hrs




5. I still would like to know who would be selling those bonds and collecting the $89 million dollars of interest….I think that would tell us alot more of why Deiss has now come out on this…follow the money trail…and those who support it…and our allied with it…they don’t want you to oppose there plans they just want you to pay for them…

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 03, 2007 at 1737 hrs




6. i would say that if someone is not taking the time to attend a meeting or read the material then yes they are uninformed.

   Kris, I agree with you, but that’s not the position that Deiss stated.  She stated that not attending the meeting meant that you were uninformed.  She said nothing of reading the material.

   Do you know what I got out of the informational meeting?  The sales pitch.  There wasn’t any relevant information presented that I had not previously learned from the newspaper, mailers, advertisements, radio, television, and blogs, but it was presented with pretty pictures (which I had already downloaded anyway). 

   A voter can be adequately informed without attending the meetings, but folks like Deiss are using attendance at one of the meetings as some sort of litmus test.

   Posted by Owen on November 03, 2007 at 2101 hrs




7. It also needs to be the right meeting to pass her test.  When she asked me a couple weeks ago if I had gone to one of the meetings, I told her I was at the one that was given during the Common Council meeting.  She said that was an abbreviated version of the ones held for the public and I still should go to one of those.

   Posted by Tony Turner on November 03, 2007 at 2202 hrs




8. So if the information that was presented at the Common Council wasn’t complete, why was it presented to the Council?  Are they ill-informed about the referendum?

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 03, 2007 at 2228 hrs




9. “I am only aware of one trailer.”

   So if I understand the question elsewhere on school referenda—to paraphrase that, how many trailers for classrooms is too many? 

   Multiplied by the number of kids per class—how many kids in trailers is too many kids in trailers instead of classrooms?

   (I empathize with West Bend; I’ve been in a fast-growing district, and a lot of tough questions are ahead for you.  But a thought from experience:  classrooms and schools just keep getting more costly to build.  Determine the tipping point and get ready to do it when that time comes—and if it’s here, build now.  We also learned that trailers really don’t work well in Wisconsin; they’re costly to heat, and kids have to keep going in and out to get to the main building for other classes; they also can add a lot of time and work for custodial staff, inside them—and outside with extra snow clearance to do, etc.)

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 04, 2007 at 2317 hrs




10. I find it odd that Kristine Deiss would lecture ANYBODY about knowing what they are voting on.  Last year during the West Bend capital budget debate, she took the unprecendeted step of reopening the capital projects budget to change a vote on the dumb Highway 33 underpass.  Her rationale - she really didn’t know what the project was or what it was all about.

    If I were trying to get something passed, I would steer clear of Kristine Deiss as an endorsement.

    Posted by Rich2 on November 05, 2007 at 1036 hrs

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.