Comments on: Why voters said ‘no’ to Portland Public Schools bond, Sellwood Bridge fee /news/2011/06/06/why-voters-said-no-to-portland-public-schools-bond-sellwood-bridge-fee/ Building and Construction News in Portland, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest Mon, 13 Oct 2014 20:48:13 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.6 By: DarrellR /news/2011/06/06/why-voters-said-no-to-portland-public-schools-bond-sellwood-bridge-fee/#comment-64750 Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:50:04 +0000 /news/2011/06/06/why-voters-said-no-to-portland-public-schools-bond-sellwood-bridge-fee/#comment-64750 I agree with a lot of what you say. One problem with the Portland Public School bond: why haven’t they been spending a portion of their income over these last 10-20 years on maintenance? Did they not think the infrastructure would wear out? Of course, the answer is that PPS robbed their own maintenance funds for other uses.

Poor money management is not a good reason to go to the voters, asking for more money.

What K-12 needs in this state is an “outside the box” solution: Hey voters! We are gonna save you more money! We are going to disband the ESD’s and make each school’s admin staff work more efficiently. We are going to stop teaching ESL in our schools (the out-of-work ESD people can start businesses that teach ESL) which will save a ton of money. Now, voters, can we trade the day-to-day savings for long-term bonds? Oh, and while we are at it, support staff don’t qualify for PERS, only teachers and principals.

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