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A reader responds
Dear Editor,
The letter to the editor in your last issue, “A bad experience in the park” from Don and Jan Grant was very disturbing to me. For their information, without the time and effort of the Patrol Volunteers in Knott park, it would be neither safe nor as clean.
The volunteer who was mentioned probably has picked up many sacks of trash since the New Year. She and other volunteers pick up trash, help the park staff with weeding, buying plants, cleaning graffiti and painting abused picnic tables. There are at least a dozen who have background checks and patrol the park in a more official capacity. All of them have worked hard to make a difference in the Park and the Neighborhood. I would ask, “What have you contributed to the Park and your neighborhood in the last thirty years of enjoying the benefits?
I did not see just cause for the public tongue lashing in the Mid-county Memo. I am reasonably sure the comments were not directed at you personally, but feel free to join us at your Neighborhood Association meetings if you have further issues. You may check the Mid-county Memo for times and place.
Sincerely,
Doris R. Larson, Parks
Parkrose Heights Association of Neighbors
About the Parkrose School Levy
Dear Editor:
I was asked my opinion of the Parkrose School District property tax levy appearing on the November 2002 ballot. This levy seeks to raise 2 million dollars in tax revenue for the Parkrose School District.
As most residents of Parkrose know, I was an avid supporter of the 1994 Parkrose bond measure. I do not give my support lightly, nor will I withhold my support without just cause. There are plenty of reasons I can not support this Levy or urge anyone else to support the Levy, at this time.
1. Since July 1999, this district has been giving away between $500,000 to $600,000 of our revenue to other school districts each year. No school board prior to this would have allowed such an act. The responsibility for this act belongs solely to the current Administration, the last school board and the current school board. Whether you call our students commodities, assets or products you don’t give 100 or more of our children away at the expense of the other 3500. It is not a sound business practice.
2. It will only cost $200 a year? That’s on top of the school boards newly raised sports fees that cost me and many others $100. Not included is possible new selective taxes, put on the ballot or imposed by the legislature.
3. I am told all the Parkrose Levy money is slated for the class room. Is it? My calculations show that about $1.5 million of these moneys are needed each year, to make up for the school districts cost of the government and legislators mismanagement of the Public Employee Retirement System. Couple this with the current Administrations give away program and this Levy is totally unnecessary.
4. The State Legislature in one of its special sessions gave the school districts a funding method (borrowing). The school district’s own auditors were quoted in the Oregonian as saying this is Enron-style bookkeeping and advises school districts not to use this method. Borrowed money carries interest payments, is this interest to be paid with this Levy? How can we teach our students Enron was wrong, when we use Enron bookkeeping techniques?
5. Will this tax stop the cuts and bleeding in Parkrose Schools? No it will not. The fact is, if the legislature continues down its present path, this money will not even make up for the cuts facing us in the 2003-2005 State budget cycle. If measures 17&19 (given to us during the 3rd special session of the year) fail as they should, it will be like a Band-Aid on a severed artery.
6. Ballot measure 5 in 1990 gave responsibility for school funding to the State. Since that time several non-partisan legislative committees have determined that schools needed a much higher funding level than the schools were receiving. Under the guise of lack of revenue these levels of funding have never been achieved. Yet the legislators and Governors over the last 10 years had enough money to enact new programs, that in this 2 year State budget alone total 2 billion dollars or more. They did this with no new taxes, at the expense of our schools. Oregon is not short education dollars, its short new program dollars.
My support of this Levy would mean that I condone what I and the school district’s auditor considers bad business practices by School Districts. It would also mean I condone the actions (or inaction) of our legislature over the last ten years. Our senators and representatives like to use the word accountability when referring to our schools, the only ones I see lacking accountability are them.
Mark Gardner
NE Prescott resident
503-254-1752
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