Yet again, a business has closed it's doors in Streetsboro. I am refering to the Big Boy Restaurant. They cited economic reasons for the closure.
More money being lost to fund the district. This is an indicator of how much the economy is affecting our community.
A 9.5 mil continous levy will only cause more of these businesses to reconsider whether or not they want to remain in this community, for just as we, they own or rent the property here and this levy will surely have and impact on them.
It is difficult for the businesses to stay above water now and a further and continous tax burden on them will make them take a harder look at whether they can continue to make a profit in this community to offset the new tax that would be placed on them.
51 employees were left without a job.
The levy does not only hurt the business in our community but it will surely hurt those families finding it tough to survive and it will also hurt those families and seniors who are on a fixed income.
Yes I do want our students to have an excellent education and I DO want them to excel to a great degree.
However the current method of education we have is costly and improvement on test scores raise only minute amounts each year showing that our current methods are failing us in a monstrous way.
We are short changing our children of an education because we do nothing more than pump money into method that is no longer viable in todays technological world.
The education system needs rebuilt. The foundation for education we have today is obsolete and non productive for the world the way it is today.
Passing this levy will only prolong the inevitable of what we have to do and the children will most definitely suffer for it. Why are we doing this to our children.
We need to go into this fiscal caution so that the state can come in and train our Superintendent and Board on how to properly spend and use funds for the betterment of the student.
Our Board and Administration for the last half of the 2008-2009 school year showed they could not figure out how stay within the means of the forecasted revenues and when the revenues went way over what was projected to come in, they spent it without any concern for the 2009-2010 school year.
This is what we should be really outraged about.
In addition to this, they terminated busing without following the guidelines set forth by the state to enact their ability to terminate busing.
A Safe Zone was to be established and considered before they terminated busing. The district has not complied with this. Why? Because there is no Safe Zone. A Safe Zone means there should be sidewalks leading to the school for all students. There are no sidewalks on 303 and none on Page Road. The children are being placed in extreme danger and your Administration and School Board turn a blind eye to this for they know the Termination of Busing can be a very effective Strong Arm tactic to get their wish.
I don't buy it and won't accept it. They stated in the local newspaper they cut 1.3 million and also received a loan of 1 million.
Busing as they have stated was going to save the district $142,000 if it was cut. They cut the expenses, got the loan but the children are still walking. If they really did care about the children of this district they would have never jeopardized their safety by eliminating busing.
Introduce a 3.5 mil emergency levy that has the focus of the children truly in mind and I will most likely support it.
Forget this 9.5 mil continous and bring in something that we can truly afford as a community.
Martin Fleming