A Taxpayer's Guide to Surviving CUSD 200: Part II

Well friends, at the end of the first installment of this blog series I passed on the good word that CUSD 200 is going to give everyone a free sofa.

Now I know you’re all very excited to hear the details on this fabulous deal, but we do need to do a quick recap on what we have learned so far.

The short takeaway from my last posting was this: When answering the simple question of why the price tag on the Jefferson building project rose from $13.5M to $17.6M, CUSD 200 administrators failed to reach even the level of Popcorn Shop wisdom.

Here’s what I mean when I say Popcorn Shop wisdom. I go to the Popcorn Shop pretty much every Saturday to get some of their fabulous popcorn. I don't go there for wisdom, but while I’m waiting for their white gold I do read stuff on their wall. For several years now they’ve had a Chinese fortune cookie taped up. It reads, “A half-truth is a Whole Lie.”

Amen.

CUSD 200 has not even reached the level of Popcorn Shop wisdom because they increased the size of the Jefferson construction project by 25% or so – and then utterly neglected to mention this fact when explaining a 30% increase in the price.

Hello?

Even if CUSD 200 had covered the rest of the explanation accurately, (which they did not) they told only half the truth. If that.

According to Popcorn Shop wisdom, CUSD 200 lied to us.

That’s what I thought, anyway. What did others think? Reactions to my last blog were generally quite positive. Apparently I’m not the only one who’s sick of being lied to. There were a few dissenters, though. Here’s a quick summary of what they had to say.

Lisa Wagner: I don’t like it when you expose CUSD 200 lies. Please stop.

Mindy K: Jefferson needs to be rebuilt, so it doesn’t matter if CUSD 200 is lying. Give them the money.

Brad Paulsen: Let’s not focus on what CUSD 200 didn’t tell you. Let’s quibble over terms and definitions instead.

Brad Paulsen is, of course, the anointed successor to an incumbent on the board that puts up with this stuff, so his inability to do better than the above in his rebuttal is quite telling. If you want more of the same, be sure to vote for Brad. You’ll get it.

OK, moving on. The free sofa. Ah, but before we talk about the free sofa, let’s do a quick pop quiz.

See if you can tell what’s weird about the following statement I recently took from a business page on CNN.com…

Jacob Lew, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, announced today a radical new solution to the U.S. debt crisis. “We have struck a deal with China. We’re going to borrow $16.7 trillion from them and pay off everything we owe. The interest expense to the Chinese for that new loan will be about $600 billion per year for about 10 years. It will only cost the average citizen about two Starbucks a day to pay this baby off, and after 11 years the United States of America will be debt free.”

Tell me, fellow taxpayers. How did you know I made that story up? I am guessing it’s because almost everyone knows that there is a huge difference between making the interest payments on your debt, on the one hand, and actually paying off the debt itself, on the other. You cannot pay China just the interest and think the debt will magic itself away in 10 years. The Chinese will be glad to take $600 billion per year in interest for 10 years. But on year 11 they’ll want $16.7 trillion.

That’s a lot of coffee in year 11, Lisa Wagner.

So I discussed these not so subtle points in finance with Dr. Harris at the recent Q&A Session on the Jefferson Referendum. After he carefully explained what the costs would be to the taxpayer, I posed him a hypothetical question.

“Dr. Harris, you’ve heard of those furniture sales where there are no payments down and no interest due for a long time – like a year or two. You know what I’m talking about, right?”

Dr. Harris nodded grudgingly and indicated he knew what I was talking about.

“OK,” I said, “then tell me this. Suppose I come to you and say, ‘Hey, I just bought an awesome new sofa from Jake’s Sofa Safari and I have to pay NO MONEY DOWN, NO INTEREST. NO NOTHING! For three years! And on the fourth year, the sofa is mine.’ Dr. Harris, have I given you any meaningful information about the true cost of the sofa to me?”

Reluctantly, Dr. Harris squeezed out an indication that No, a statement like that would be totally devoid of useful information on the cost of the sofa.

“I agree, Dr. Harris,” I said. “But that’s pretty much what you’ve been doing in your interviews with the media. Here in this small meeting you show a slide that says in year 11 the owner of a $300,000 home pays about $350 in taxes for the Jefferson project. And I grant that it’s in your website too. But Dr. Harris, I’ve googled around, and all you ever say in your media interviews is that yearly payments for years 1 through 10 will be in the ballpark of $30/yr or whatever. What’s worse, I’ve noted that a board member has been saying the same thing. By ignoring the massive last payment, you and that board member have misrepresented on a massive scale the true cost of what taxpayers will actually have to pay.”

Tip #3: When you catch CUSD 200 hiding something, they usually promise to stop hiding it.

Yes, Tip #3 was in Part I, but it’s worth repeating here. Dr. Harris responded by indicating not only that (a) he knew which quotes I was referring to, but also that (b) he agreed that they very much misrepresented the full cost, just as in my sofa example I posed to him. And of course, (c) he said they'd do their best to get the better information out to the voters.

The quotes themselves are easily found, but let me save you all some time.

Dr. Harris: 

Joann Coghill: "I am 100 percent for passing the Jefferson Referendum. The current facility is unacceptable for the students it serves. It will be paid off in 11 years and with our current bond debt will only increase the average homeowner’s taxes by $20 - $50 a year."

Fellow taxpayers, the above statements from the Superintendent and a currently serving board member are a pale shadow of the truth, by Dr. Harris’ own admission.

Check out Exhibit A to get a picture of the true cost. A quick glance at it shows that CUSD 200 has, once again, failed to reach the level of Popcorn Shop wisdom. They intentionally only told us half the truth.

And by half, I really do mean HALF.

We covered in my last posting that CUSD 200 had abused the concept of inflation to the tune of about $1.7 million.

But that’s all chump change.

Here we see CUSD 200 going for the big kahuna. Because guess what? Their failure in public commentary to include the last payment is a $7.5 MILLION miss. Pretty close to half the cost of the project.

Tip #4: When CUSD 200 administrators are $9.2 million off the mark on a $17.6 million project, it’s time to shut your wallets until they come forth with the truth story. The whole true story.

Confession Time: CUSD 200 is not giving out free sofas.

OK, I confessed to my misstatement. Time for CUSD 200 to fess up to their many misstatements. But rest assured they won't do that if they don't have to. The way to reform this situation is start saying NO to all this garbage.

Does a Jefferson project need to happen? Absolutely. And it will. But the dirty little secret that CUSD 200 does not want you to know is that it can be done without us ponying a new pile of cash. More on that in a future blog.

All that needs to be said here is that we do not have to vote Yes to this heaping, steaming pile of misinformation served up to us by CUSD 200.

By the way, I’m indebted to an article on Kyle Nenninger which brought to my attention just how grossly CUSD 200 administrators had misrepresented the costs involved. Kyle is a non-incumbent running for the board, so if you don’t want more of the same, you might want to vote for Kyle and other new faces.

Tip #5: Take CUSD 200 promises to make amends with an inflation-adjusted grain of salt.

One of the things I find most disturbing about this whole situation is that the quote from Joann Coghill is in an article dated February 20. But the article convering Kyle Nenninger’s concerns is dated January 28th. So three weeks passed and serving Board members are still peddling the same half-truths that Dr. Harris (with Kyle's input) had already fixed up on the CUSD 200 website.

How should we interpret these things?

Should we assume the board is out to lunch? (This is actually a reasonable question, given the $380,000 salary they paid to former superintendent Catalani a few years back.)

Not out to lunch? Ok. How about we assume that Dr. Harris and the board were not communicating well? And also that the board never read the article on Kyle?

Come on. Who are we kidding? No… these answers don’t make much sense.

But there is an answer that does make sense. I’ll save them for the next installment. My tentative working title for it is “How CUSD 200 Tells Whoppers and Gets Away With It”.

Until then!