DEAR EDITOR:
Mr. Morejon, you place me in a difficult position. Your rebuttal
had so many factual and conceptual errors that I hardly know where
to begin. Most of the following information is from the Gilroy
Unified School district budgets for 2001-2002 and 2002-2003.
DEAR EDITOR:
Mr. Morejon, you place me in a difficult position. Your rebuttal had so many factual and conceptual errors that I hardly know where to begin. Most of the following information is from the Gilroy Unified School district budgets for 2001-2002 and 2002-2003.
You accuse us Measure I opponents of disputing the need for repairs. Not so. We disagree on how they should be paid for, not on whether they should be done.
You claim the pressure of increasing enrollment is driving GUSD to build expensive new schools. Estimated 2002-2003 enrollment is down from 9,824 last year to 9,530 this year. Enrollment appears to be declining.
You imply that no maintenance or expansion can be done without passage of Measure I. While that reflects the attitude of GUSD, as a practical matter it is false. The financial impact of Measure I on the GUSD budget is somewhere between minor and minuscule. Sufficient funds for repairs are, in my opinion, readily available with the money GUSD already has.
You inflated my salary quote of $75,985 by adding benefits to make it seem absurd. As I said in my letter, that number is total compensation; it already has benefits in it. Certified GUSD payroll is $41,259,841. Total payroll is $53,368,125. (I’ll take that house in Eagle Ridge for $50,000, if you can prove title and are not attempting another swindle.)
You claim $4,606 per student at GUSD. The 2002-2003 budget has total expenditures of $92,121,932 on 9,530 students, an average of $9,666.52. For your information, an elite private school like Bellarmine gets along on $8,400 per student.
Either your numbers are a lie or the GUSD budget is a lie. You explain which; I’m just a messenger.
Finally, you stated that the high tax burden in the U.S., the national debt, California’s budget SNAFU, teacher’s salaries, and financial privation in the private sector have nothing to do with paying for GUSD’s maintenance and expansion. Mr. Morejon, us taxpayers out here pay for the whole dang thing. Measure I is just another demand for money from a bureaucracy that already carries the stuff off in train loads.
In my opinion, unfamiliarity with what life is like for people who are not government employees leads you to complain incessantly about the imagined inadequacies of a very comfortable lifestyle. Your focus on your work has led you to undervalue the needs and contributions of the rest of society.
For voters, it is prudent to evaluate the whole picture when considering a funding request like Measure I. Look ahead if you will, Mr. Morejon, just for a moment. Baby Boomers start retiring in seven years. The government is already deeply in debt. It is facing huge increases in Social Security and Medicare costs while the tax base declines. Confrontations with communist and Islamic countries are intensifying. It is not impossible that we are looking at the opening steps in another round of major wars. Wars are very expensive, Mr. Morejon. Our nation needs to be building reserves right now, not frittering.
Stuart Allen, Gilroy
Submitted Saturday, Oct. 26 to ed****@ga****.com
