Greater Orange News Service

When this process was started, I was hoping that the voting would be by districts. If you were in the Orange High School area, meaning your children, due to where you live would go to Orange High, then your vote would only be to upgrade Orange High and you were willing to be taxed to do just that. The same would hold true for the other 3 high schools. Unfortunately, the OUSD board put out measure K for the whole district. It would truly be a shame that we could only upgrade maybe 2 of the 4 high schools, but if that is what the voters want, then I have no problem with it. With individuals like Deborah Pauly going door to door telling home owners that their property tax would go up by 2 to 4 thousand dollars, uninformed home owners would vote naturally vote no. As property taxes had just come out, the honest thing to do would be to tell the home owner, if their property taxes were $2,000 dollars a year, then they would see their taxes go up by about 80 dollars a year. Wow, 7 dollars a month to upgrade our high schools, that is one small investment. Honest, straight forward information. Unfortunately, spreading false information is just so much easier. Just as bad was Robert Hammond, who sits on the Orange County Board of Education. This individual was reported to have gone to the Villa Park City Council Meeting, where he put forth that President Doty, of Chapman University, was reported to have been promised a sweetheart land deal in trade for his support of measure K. That was an outright lie, but that didn't bother Mr. Hammond, the truth never does when your looking for votes. Well Mr. Hammond and Ms. Pauly were successful, in 2 years if they are just as successful, Villa Park High School will look in 20 years, much the same as it does today, who looses, everyone. As past history tell us all, Villa Park, one of the most affluent areas in Southern California, will never pass a school bond. Thats fine, here is praying that in two years, the board gets it right and looks to improve the schools the voters want improved.
 

Haven't the voters spoken twice on this and said NO to these kinds of bonds like Measure k? I would hate to see more of our tax money being spent on "architectural consulting" and campaigning rather than going to these 4 high schools. Can somebody give me an honest accounting of what has been spent on architects and campaign signs? It's been into multiple hundreds of thousands, right? Something tells me that the leaders behind this bond will do nothing else for these schools but wait for a yes vote on another bond in two years. These schools do not need $300 million. So much could have been done over the years to save for expected maintenance, yet OUSD just waited for us to pass a ridiculously expensive bond with huge interest rates. I also think it's outrageous that "CARE" calls anybody who would vote NO selfish and uncaring of our children. I have very young kids in OUSD now! OUSD just doesn't want to spend any money of there own to maintain these campuses so they can keep a reserve for pensions and raises of their staff. Very self-serving.