By: Diane Benjamin
Last night’s live stream: https://vimeo.com/event/2815172
The video will not play for me! See if it does for you.
Since I was at the Tri-Valley meeting, people who attended this meeting let me know what happened.
If you can get the video to play, go to around 1:39. A retired financial guy from County Companies named Pete Borowski reviewed the last audit. He claims the district has $88 million in reserves they can spend anyway they want.
Public Comment went for over 1 1/2 hours. The school board then decided to hurt as many parents as possible by cutting all junior high sports and clubs. They will cut all freshman sports. Of course band and orchestra had to be cut for 5th graders too.
Unit 5 wants to scare parents into voting to raise taxes!
The deficit continues to grow because this administration does not balance the budget. The bobbleheads on the school board say okey-dokey!
The referendum needs voted down again and actual adults elected to the board. None of this needs to happen if responsible fiscal management starts. Unit 5 is not taking into account the additional value of properties that will benefit them. Fear is a better route to get more of your money.
Meanwhile senior citizens won’t be able to stay in their homes because of escalating property taxes. You need to vote NO and elect a new slate of Board members who are serious about education. Weikle and this board aren’t.
Unit 5 managed to cut TWO whole administrators. Kneel now plebs.
Voting details here: https://blnnews.com/2023/01/30/unit-5-doesnt-want-you-to-know-an-election-is-coming/
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I caught about half of it. Their targeted budget cuts are so obviously deliberate as a political tactic to push for a ‘yes’ vote to increase taxes. At least Pete Borowski’s comments were refreshing. I think this is what he’s referring to… see page 11 of the FY22 audit for unassigned funds: https://www.unit5.org/cms/lib/IL01905100/Centricity/domain/54/audit%20reports/FY22%20Financial%20Statements.pdf
Very illuminating. Thanks for sharing.
Here’s a question for the school board members:
“How many positions will be eliminated & what is the cost savings by the cuts??”
Every voter in Unit 5 should ask this question – which If Answered (ha-ha) will lead to many more questions.
The already eliminated people/jobs, classes, etc when they made cuts last year. All on the premise that they had to because of a, “structural deficit.” Now we find out they actually have a savings account with $80,000,000 in it. Their threats to cut Carlock Elementary are reprehensible. There is no financial reason to close Carlock Elementary. But the optics of having an Exemplary School cannot stand. It sheds bad light on the underperforming schools. Can’t have that. One girl said she no longer has an IEP because of how well she’s done. Can’t have that. Need those IEP numbers and $$$revenue. Well, now we know that the cuts they made and are threatening to make are not really needed. So what’s really going on? Why would they actually want to close Carlock Elementary? Is it because Carlock Elementary Teachers, students, and staff exemplify what a school should be? One things for sure, they are liars over at the Unit 5 Admin Offices w/Weikle leading the pack.
The current School board is just a carryover from the old school board that was made up of a bunch of morons. All they did was spend spend spend in the past 10 to 15 years and now it’s coming to a head where they don’t even have any answers. Anybody who’s been in the school board for the last 15 years is to blame for this mess. Vote no!
The best-and most likely- explanation I’ve heard re: the Carlock closure is that by threatening that school, they guarantee a block of voters (Carlock residents) who typically vote fiscally conservative will vote for the referendum in order to save the school. Unit 5 doesn’t need to convince ALL the voters in the district to vote yes; they just need a few more, and Carlock voters will push the yes votes over the edge.
All I know is that the “no” group needs to counteract all of the emotion out there on social media right now with some common sense facts and figures. The “no” group has no talking points and no shared mouthpiece like the teachers union does, and it shows.
Carlock will still be closed because there aren’t enough kids to justify staff. Voting yes won’t help.
Is the Unit 5 School Board now a terrorist organization? “Give us more money or we will hurt your children” seems to be their marketing campaign for the tax increase. If you want to fund terrorists, vote accordingly.
The financial statements seem to be designed to give contradictory numbers so anybody willing to take the time to understand them can find a soundbite to confuse ‘the opposition’.
88M in unrestricted funds? It’s there. A big operating loss? It’s there. Bonds to cover ongoing expenses? It’s there.
Investment assets that mean those bonds didn’t necessarily have to be issued? It’s there.
What’s NOT there, however, is are the rising real estate values that will mean increased future revenues. What’s NOT there is the multiple housing developments in the pipeline that will mean increased future revenues. What’s NOT there is the expiring TIF districts that will mean fewer future revenues will be diverted to the Town of Normal.
Will those above items Solve the problem? I don’t know, and to be honest my best guess is not completely.
So we have two options to ‘do something’:
– Do the ‘something’ that is recommended by people who are trying to bully us into paying more by proposing cuts that will purposely cause the most possible pain rather than do their jobs and find more / better / smaller cuts; and (re)elect people who will continue to do the same to us and our children.
– NOT give more money to people who are willing to hurt our children in order to increase their own power and avoid doing the job they were elected to do; and elect people who Will try to find a more balanced solution. There may still be cuts, and there may still be tax increases, and Carlock may still be closed; I don’t know. But we need to have better people in place making these decisions.
* ELECT * Amee Jada * Brad Wurth * Dennis Frank * Mollie Emery * Steve Mackowiak *
(And vote NO to Unit 5 Terrorism)
Karl:
Very well written with Facts!!!
TON taxpayers will be getting increased taxes once the TIF districts UNLESS Fiscal Conservatives are elected and make major changes to TON’s budget.