Schools and taxes

Once again property taxpayers in the Delaware Valley School District face the prospect of having fiscal liberals run the school board. The primary election in May should capture the attention of any property taxpayer concerned with the level of taxation being imposed on residents of this district. Education at any cost is a principle that taxpayers should not support. The cost of a basic public education in many districts of this country, including our own, has become ridiculously expensive. We keep throwing money into this system and nothing much changes. It is one of the most expensive public education systems in the world and we get only mediocre results. Like other taxpayer supported institutions, the education system has become a self-serving, bloated bureaucracy. This institution has created national & state organizations that, for the most part, have insulated themselves against taxpayer control. Even the taxpayer funded judicial system appears to present more and more restrictions on taxpayer discretions. The education bureaucracy, like other governmental bureaucracies, does not make it easy for real expense control and results-oriented efficiency procedures to be implemented. As long as they can increase taxes, expense control will not be treated in a serious way. Public unions, not taxpayers, rule. Needless to say, the taxpayer should have the final say on what he or she is willing to pay to support public education—or any other tax supported government function. Our politicians, however, have done all in their power to make it difficult for us to exercise that right. We can, however, elect fiscal conservatives to the DV School Board to give us some chance of controlling the spending mania. Fiscal liberals will always attempt to justify larger budgets in the name of children - and questionable curriculums. The question is can they get better results for our education dollar? History has shown us that they cannot. A public education system is important but it is not worth losing your home to - or in support of almost any service that government claims to provide. Never forget, the power to tax is the power to destroy. Don’t let the tax and spend crowd reduce our Constitutional right of real property ownership. The home you save may be your own. Vote for and vote only for Goldsack, Marasa, and Wright in the May primary to help preserve some fiscal sanity within our school district. Karl H. Flail Westfall