They could have been heroes but greed got in the way!
Bow School Board showed us just how out of touch they are. They worked the numbers to make it look like a budget reduction, then proceeded to give the administration and the teachers a raise along the way. A raise? Seriously? Yep to the tune of 3.64%!
Do they not know that the economy is in the toilet? Bow Taxpayers are hurting and this is how they react. Throw a dose of salt on the wound!
We taxpayers in Bow have historically been very generous. Would it kill them to give tax relief during an economic crisis?
It is your duty as a taxpayer to be educated and I hope all of you have done your homework and are prepared to come out Friday, March 13 and vote NO to increased taxes.
Please consider the Bow families who have been here for centuries and are living on a fixed income or the young couples who have 3 small children at home who are struggling to buy baby formula, or the middle aged couples who are near retirement and have found their investments have dwindled and now have to work for more years than they expected.
Don’t they all deserve a break this year?
Vote NO, it’s that simple.
In the Bunker,
Cindy Martin
MS Martin is again in the bunker with the lights off. Let’s not focus on the poorly written statements and mangled English. But the miracle math is certainly worth a look.
Comparing the combined totals of article 3 and 4 from 2008 to 2009 I see the following:
2008
Article 3 $ 24,830,746.00
Article 4 $ 92,644.00
$ 24,923,390.00
2009 Article 3 $ 24,408,702.00
Article 4 $ 356,310.00
$ 24,765,012.00
It may just be me, but the 2009 figure total looks like less to me. Could it be even less or should it be even less? Maybe. I expect the voters to decide. But in any case the implied “increase in taxes” she would have us vote against does not appear to be there.
Cindy,
Perhaps you are better informed than I. Could you inform me of the reasons why the School Board approved the pay increase? Were there concessions made by the teacher’s union? If so what were they.
Perhaps it would be worth while to case judgment (or blame) on the appropriate parties after they have had their chance to speak at the town meeting.
APOVinBOW,
It looks like you didn’t even read what Cindy said. In times like these a 3.64% increase is excessive. People are losing their jobs, taking pay cuts and losing their retirment savings it is too much. the teachers can wait a year and see how the economy is then. I will vote no on article #4 and #5.
I agree with you Cindy: vote no to increased taxes, and approve the proposed school budget!
publius,
We are not far off Vote no on articles 4 & 5 the teacher’s contract and possible revote and make a modest reduction to the budget (enrollment driven reductions).
APOVinBOW-Do the math and add take out the extra ~$350,000 that taxpayers dished out for overpayment on insurance. Yes we will get that back if the school board doesn’t spend it first. Also APOVinBOW why the personal attacks, remember what socialist Harry Judd said, town officials are your neighbor.
Our school board has a very bad habit of over estimating expenditures and underestimating revenue. This causes a huge tax bill to come right at Christmas time, the worst time of year. The reason the school board does this is so they don’t have to make belt tightening decisions through out the year. We as taxpayers have to make belt tightening decisions everyday.
Taxed2death-I am with you, hope to see you at the meeting!!!
Did anyone see the self serving Teacher’s letter to the letter in the morning’s Concor Monitor. She is married to a lawyer and she is pleading for a pay increase. Also did any see the person from Hopkinton shaming a Bow Resident who did not support the teacher’s contract. I guess employees working for the taxpayer aren’t feeling the economic down turn. These comments will backfire.
Well if teachers who live in Bow can come tonight and vote themselves a pay raise and not feel the guilt of greed there is no need for the hard strapped taxpayer to feel any guilt for voting no to higher taxes.
I will be voting no tonight.
Taxed, the Bow Teacher and the person from Hopkinton did not do the Bow teachers any favors. If you have enough of high tax bills and the economy is hitting you hard their letters will motivate you go to the meeting tonight.
I agree if teachers who live in Bow can come tonight and vote themselves a pay raise and not feel the guilt of greed there is no need for the hard strapped taxpayer to feel any guilt for voting no to higher taxes.
I will be voting no
Do not attack the messenger, but criticize the message if you want…
We do not allow personal attacks on this website. And we are not here to correct each others’ grammar… it takes the focus from the actual discussion.
Did they raise the budget by almost 4% while making it look like a reduction or did they not? That is the question.
Correct me if I am wrong here but this is how I see it from information that I can find.
If you compare 2008-09 budget to 2009-10 proposed budget as presented to Budget Committee (BC) you get a -1.97% decrease
If you add in the lunch program and remove the $96,145 the BC reduced it by I get a decrease of -2.2%.
If you then add in the possible increase of $356,310 if the WA#4 (teachers contract) passes I get a decrease of -.77%.
If you then remove the amount of over estimating the 2008-09 insurance benefits increase of approximately $330,000 in order to more accurately compare apples to apples from last to this year as several folks at the public hearing had suggested I get an increased of +.56%.
You once had a little animated stick man pounding his head against the wall with the caption, spending increases taxes. Well any increase in spending sure does increase taxes IMHO and likewise reduced spending should reduce taxes. I am all for reduced taxes especially in these poor economic times.
I agree with Cindy, vote no to everything and reduce taxes.
Keep up the good fight, Cindy.
We have an education bureaucracy that the Bow school machine needs to keep intacted and well greased with taxpayer’s money.
Kudos Ms. Martin.
Tax Tired you are absolutely right about an education bureaucracy. It is going to take years to trim down this monster.
I am hoping for a huge turnout tonight. See you all around 7:00 PM tonight. I like the front page it says bring a friend, sounds like a plan.
RLB, thanks for the specifics I knew we were going to get an increase and we haven’t even got to the town yet.
Yeswecan,
Looks like you got your wish. There was a huge turn out. Doesn’t sound like the vote went the way you had hoped, however.
Despite Cindy’s, RLB, and others number manipulation, I still maintain that it is a hard sell to convince folks their taxes (amount of the check they will be writing) is increasing when the current number is lower than last year’s number. Really think you all should have concentrated on the merits of an additional decrease rather than trying to prove that less is more.
On the other hand, I am happy with the results so keep up the good work!
APOVinBOW
Keep up your pompous attitude, it suits you well. When the deck is stacked against you the truth has a hard time coming out. Cindy and Rick did a good job at getting out the truth but this webisite that allows both sides to speak and perhaps a few letters to the editor can’t compete with taxpayer financed misinformation. The school board’s news and views had almost had the same info presented at the meeting. Taxpayers had only 3 minutes to speak while the school board had 10 minutes the abuse of the emergency alert system target at parents of students would cost hundreds of dollars for the private sector to get their message out.
Hey APOVinBOW if you are proud you won with a stacked deck than good for you. This voter is proud of BCC accomplishments. BCC has exposed the huge spending of the school board and that rate of their spending growth has dropped dramatically since BCC started, I think last year. Lastly I think turn out in the single digit percentage isn’t good but I bet you do.
yeswecan
What misinformation are you referring to? I read the entire flier and couldn’t come with anything that fit that bill. It even had a flowchart that showed how to amend the budget and said flat out that the budget can only be approved with taxpayer approval.
Greater information is exactly what we’re looking for here, right?
RLB, you can’t remove the insurance over-esitmate in your comparison because its inclusion was part of the expeditures used to set the tax rate this year. If returned to the taxpayers on July 1, its comiing out this year, and the net result for this year is a decrease.
Yeswecan
You have hit a point upon which we both can agree – “turn out in the single digit percentage isn’t goodâ€. No argument there. I wish more folks did turn out. Of course, I would like to point out that equally poor turn outs (single digit percentages) have decreased the Town budget the past two years. I may be out of line, but I think in those cases you are quite content with the level of turn out.
Your other observation “you are proud you won†is way out of line. We were never engaged in a contest. It appears that my opinion was in keeping with the majority of voters who made the time to attend the meeting. In actuality we all gained some tax relief. Perhaps not as much as you would like to have seen. But, as I have always maintained, less is less. Not much less, but still less.
APOVinBOW, not too much to argue with in your post. I think your second paragraph is how I see the town budget as well. The goal is to get more participation without taking away the taxpayers right to vote on specific issues. Bow is big enough to move away form the exclusive nature of town meetings and the major flaws associated with them. Town Meetings are not a pure democracy as another poster claimed inaccurately.
Low turnout is not acceptable where it decreases spending and it isn’t accptable when it increases spending either.
publius, you are new to this site. There is plenty of data on this site to prove my point. There are plenty of ways of showing data and you can look at the school boards with blinders on if you wish.
Now to compete with Dr. Cascadden’s presentation and Deb McCann’s presentation with only 3 minutes is impossible. It would be too difficult to explain the difference in your data and the school board’s data.
Why do you think then you have a debate you give the candidates equal time?
This is the way it should be:
1) No Taxapyer money should be used for political issues
2) Those Bow Residents who favor increasing the budget should take up a collection and send out a news letter on their dime explaining the the reasons why we should spend more.
3) Those Bow Residents who faver a budget decrease should do the same.
4) They both would agree to send out their news letter at the same time
5) The debate begins with letters to the editor and ends at the school/town meeting. No one uses taxpayer monies to get out their voters or get info out.
6) Each side gets equal time at the school/town meeting
Well said, “yeswecan”
Can you explain this?
1) No Taxapyer money should be used for political issues
How was taxpayer money used for political purposes?
Good question Rasputin! I have wondered the same myself.
yeswecan, if you felt as though people should have an unlimited forum to speak, you could have always made a motion to change the procedures.
2) and 3) I don’t necessarily understand what point you’re driving at here.
6) No side is given any more time than they like. If people on any side of the issue want to speak, they are given the opportunity. Mr. Keene was given numerous opportunities to do so. Town meeting isn’t a formal debate, and, as such, is governed by those that wish to have their voices heard. This seems to make sense. If a small minority wants to get a point across they should not be entitled to equal time as the majority. Rather, their times is dictated by their desire to express their view. Should many from that minority wish to speak, they will have such an opportunity. If they do not, that forum should not be forced upon them.
Well, who did pay for the blue flyer from the school board and the school administrator?
Why was there no pie or graph at the school meeting showing the benefits received by the teachers? Deception by omission, that’s why. Their benefit package is top notch and wasn’t mentioned once when talking about salaries. One hears on the national news every night about communities across the country which have public servants foregoing pay raises so that fellow workers may retain their jobs no matter how meager they are. That is the true meaning and spirit of human generosity in the toughest economic times in ages. Obviously this didn’t happen in Bow. We now know, without a doubt, exactly where the teachers stand. I’m sure that not all of the teachers necessarily favored raises but as a group they did.
The blue flyer and the slide presentation at the meeting were all about “teaching to reach certain numbers,” as dictated by law. Isn’t it time to just let the teachers teach? It’s a shame that government dictates in this case. Because of these mandates, the US is falling behind in education.
Did anyone notice how rudely the school board and administrators were when the well-dressed gentlemen presented his slide show? They were talking amongst themselves, some stood, the wonderful superintendent stood over to the side with a school principal to see who was watching the slide show but they themselves showed no interest. This is the mentality of our current school board and administration in that it is not receptive to ideas from outside their “world.”
The President favors merit pay raises for teachers. Why don’t we?
How sad. Your school board sounds just as elitist and snotty as some of the other new high school cliques in NH. They are better than you, don’t you know? They learned the art of BS at their ivy league schools and not much more. They learned to look their noses down at anything that doesn’t cost money. It’s all a plot to promote the agenda, I’m not kidding. I would rather my kid flunk that have to attend a school like Bow High School… and then their principal went on to poison Bedford too. Now that he ruined that place he’s moving on…and the spending keeps on going. What a sham.. meanwhile people are barely hanging on to their homes… pearls before swine I say.