There are times when a thing is expensive, but you’ve got to bite the bullet and do it. Owning a home is expensive, but a great asset. There are other things that are costly but a good investment in the long run, like braces. If you’re like me, you keep your car until it doesn’t make sense to repair it anymore. I own vehicles for 15 or more years at a time, that’s because I maintain them well (actually it’s professionals who maintain them, but I keep the schedule and pay the bills). However, no matter how well I maintain those vehicles there does come a time when they must be replaced. The same is true of the high school.
I want to deal with some of the misinformation that people are throwing out about the high school and the School Board. The first is, “If only we’d maintained the high school better, it would last longer.” The high school has been well maintained, as a guy who spent 36 years of my life in Room 200 of MHS, I know. For example, the west wall and windows were redone to increase energy efficiency. Motel air conditioners were installed in the “old” part of the building when the new addition was installed. The reason why central air, etc., wasn’t incorporated throughout the building was the pipes and other infrastructure were too ancient even then in the old part of the building to tie into new technology and that was a couple of decades ago now. The boiler has been fixed more than once over the years. A new boiler runs over $500,000 (depending on the size of the school, $522,000 – $595,000). Imagine the outcry from the opponents of a new building when half a million dollars goes to a brand-new boiler for a structure that’s on its last legs anyway. There are other examples but I’m sure you take my point, living with an old building entails costs – throwing good money after bad.
The point is, we’re building new classroom space. There will be a new high school. The School Board looked at inflation, construction schedules etc. and decided to maximize your tax dollars and get the best value they could, while they could. The question now is, do we run two schools – one for academics and one for athletics – maintaining, heating (but not cooling both – no AC in the old high school gym as anyone who has attended a volleyball game knows), with personnel costs – maintenance, custodial etc., for both buildings?
The critics say that the School Board has been avoiding a bond issue. What!?! What are we voting on June 6th, if not a bond issue? The School Board is being simultaneously criticized for saving money for a new high school and thereby not seeking a bond issue for the entire amount at some point in the past while also being criticized for not saving enough to pay the entire bill for a new school. The detractors are asserting that your taxes will be based on the entire bill. That’s a falsehood. Of the total cost, $45 million is in the bank. That portion is not part of the bond’s tax bill, you’ve paid that once already as a part of your regular school property tax over the years. That money is there, without increasing taxes, because of the School Board’s frugality over the past decades in saving money in order to NOT raise taxes. The only part of the bill you’ll be required to pay, should the bond issue pass, is the $17 million for the new athletic facilities. Of course, if you don’t vote for the bond issue some of your taxes will be used to maintain two buildings, instead of one, as I’ve stated earlier, and the cost of building athletic space later will be significantly more expensive.
Old buildings on Main Street are burning down, falling down and being torn down. If we don’t pass the bond issue at some point, after wasting hundreds of thousands in continuing to maintain an old building, the elderly MHS will come down anyway. It’s inevitable, just a question of when. At that point, new athletic facilities will have to be built. Do you imagine it will be any cheaper one, five or ten years in the future? If we don’t pass the bond issue in June, future citizens will be lamenting our short-sightedness and those taxpayers will be grumbling that facilities that could have been built for just $17 million “back in the day” (read, with the bond issue passing June 6th) now costs as much as an entire the new high school once did, or some other similar comparison, as they take our collective names in vain around some future coffee shop table.
Inflation is real. Age, no matter how well a building is maintained, matters – especially when used by children most of the year. Putting a twist on an old adage, sometimes you have to spend money to save money. No one likes to pay taxes, but taxes bring good things like clean water to your home, smooth streets, police and fire protection and schools. Common Sense dictates that we pass the bond issue and avoid inflating our costs, paying to run and maintain two buildings (if the gym is heated in the old MHS – the whole building is heated, there is no way to just climate control part of the structure) with the attendant personnel, supplies and other costs.
Pay now or pay later when it will be significantly more expensive. That’s the choice. There is no option where you don’t pay at all. If the bond issue doesn’t pass, then two buildings with all the attendant costs to maintain an aging building come into play – on your dime. I’d rather pay now for several reasons. For the image of the town and to attract new residents and employees to Mitchell, having one cohesive building with modern athletic facilities makes sense. From a rational point of view, running two buildings is stupid and expensive. Finally, from a fiscal point of view it makes more sense to build now when the price of building will be less; after all, when is the last time a car or house got cheaper the longer you waited to buy it?
Vote “YES” on June 6th.