People had valid reasons to vote No on school bond

Fifty-three percent will be the high water mark for the bond.

They will not do better without seriously separating wants from needs, cutting the cost by over half and eliminating a plan to consolidate in Jefferson.

Ben Franklin, just like many downtown businesses, is closing its doors soon. We recently lost the Metro Bar, Linda’s Fashions and Excuses Pizza. Hy-Vee Drug moved off the Square and the building has been vacant for over a year.

We lost Pizza Ranch in a more dramatic turn of events that was, however, also very much motivated by economic factors.

The jobs brought in by Hy-Vee and Wild Rose are not high-salaried positions.

An argument that spending money on a fancier school will encourage growth is ludicrous.

Increasing property taxes is passed on to users. When a person decides to take one of the new hourly wage jobs, the next thing they will check will be the cost of living. This includes rent prices, groceries, gas and other expenses. All of these will go up if this bond passes.

The student population has been declining since the ’50s. Nothing in the plan has to do with increasing the capacity or encouraging new enrollment. Arguments that a school infrastructure grow the community in a meaningful way are either disingenuous or misinformed.

Additionally, the primary production that funds our local county economy is agriculture. Whether you work at the hospital, Shopko or Scranton Manufacturing, the hours, raises and bonuses you will receive are tied to the grain markets.

With corn prices so low that farmers cannot even break even, it is not a good time to call people selfish for not wanting to spend millions of dollars on new gyms to host athletic tournaments that will raise our taxes and bring in people from around the state to not shop at our shuttered downtown businesses.

Another big obstacle that will certainly prevent this bond from passing is the plan to shutter school buildings and consolidate in Jefferson.

It is a logistical hassle to move kids around the county when the majority of them start near Jefferson. However, the precinct results don’t lie.

In Scranton, the daily lifeblood and ambient noise of youthful spirit in the middle of the community abruptly came to a halt. A bulldozed lot and a quiet gym with a ghostly feel now are memorials to a once busy town. The downtown library became the next victim of limited activity. The Scranton precinct voter turnout reflected their regret.

Grand Junction, which has recently worked to put in millions of dollars into their school building and to construct a community center, voted to reflect that they don’t want to be the next victim of consolidation.

The outlying communities don’t want Greene County to be the Jefferson School District with bus routes from ghost towns.

Just by placing satellite absentee stations in the rural precincts and putting out paper flyers, these communities would have the votes to stop a plan to close their buildings every time. If the next bond proposal includes turning our current buildings in Jefferson or Grand Junction into bat colonies or vacant lots, it will not pass.

The Pay It Forward Committee did a better job of setting the tone this time.

Both last year and this one, I found myself, along with some other folks, under criticism because our children didn’t live here, we’re home-schooled or their children have already graduated. Personal attacks cause people to sink into their position and those watching it happen to their neighbors avoid getting involved in the issue.

It is also typically not an effective argument to try and imply that other people are selfish because they are unwilling to pay for your kids’ education.

The tone of “paying it forward” is a good one. Let’s keep using it in both name and spirit and avoid hostility that will close down communication.

I am upset that the school board took no action to investigate Tim Christensen for allowing the school district to illegally conduct electioneering activity using public resources.

If leadership wants this to pass, they are going to need to rebuild trust in the community.

My current livelihood is electoral politics, and I understand campaign strategy and the applicable laws. I do not mind filing ethics complaints against oppositional state senate candidates or a candidate for Congress with federal and state agencies for political expediency. However, I have exceptional hesitation when it comes to doing so against my friends, neighbors and former teachers.  

I would be happy to meet with members of the Pay It Forward Committee to get them ready for the financial disclosures, expenditure reporting and attribution regulations to get them in compliance with state law so everything is above board on the inevitable third pass.

However, as a public official, the superintendent violated his responsibilities and should not be let off the hook. The Greene County School District network domain registered and set up the website and infrastructure for the Pay It Forward Committee in violation of state law. The school district IT administrator also built the cyber sites and registered them under his official capacity and with official affiliation to the school.

You cannot use public resources to campaign to raise taxes. It is illegal.

It is also illegal to direct public employees to break the law. It is negligent to allow your public employees to break the law. It is the job of the superintendent to ensure the community school district conducts itself in accordance with the law.

The school board needs to refer this issue to the county attorney or another applicable oversight agency.

Last week, the editor quoted the renown elections analyst and Democratic blogger John Deeth about the rule of thumb when there is money on the ballot: “There’s about a 20 percent automatic No vote who just doesn’t want to spend money on anything.”

This severely reduces the number of persuadable people available to pass a bond. It’s a long way to go from 53 to 60 percent.

I am not among the 20 percent of always No. When the bond was initially proposed last year, I was undecided.

I read all the published information. I talked to community stakeholders. I then used a sampled canvassing technique to knock on doors in all the communities in the district. I hit about 1,000 doors and had about 250 conversations on doorsteps.

With all that information, I concluded it was the wrong proposal.

One year later, essentially the same plan was submitted again with some very token budget reductions and more organizing. I got the feeling that the Pay It Forward Committee was of the mindset that “they were right” and felt the problem was that if people in the community didn’t agree with them, it was because either they didn’t know that to be right you had to vote Yes, or they figured not enough people cared enough to vote.

They never considered that people had valid reasons to vote No.

The turnout numbers in a municipal or school election are always their highest when there is a bond. Boosting turnout will not get this above 60 percent. To get this approved, we must turn some of the No’s to Yes.

I’m a JSHS grad. This community and its school system gave me the education and values to go on to West Point, Harvard and to lead other great Americans in combat. I appreciated this community enough to move back home after a career in the service. I am very much interested in paying it forward as a steward and trustee to the community and its future.

We need to separate the wants from the needs.

We need to create a proposal that works for all the towns and neighborhoods in the district.  

Let’s not waste more time trying to ram through a proposal that will not pass.

One stakeholder very succinctly told me last year, “They are asking for a Cadillac when what they need is a Chevy.”

Please contact me at my email below so we can plan a community event where we will all sit down together and work through our differences.

We can open the formal discussion after playing the classic Rolling Stones hit “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” — “but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.”

John Thompson, of Jefferson, is a political activist and a 1997 Jefferson-Scranton High School alum. Contact him at john_kurt_thompson@yahoo.com