I’ve seen a rise in town fire department and emergency service issues reports from readers around the state. They all seem to be having problems. And?
I wonder if this is how we break the SAU local school district’s death grip on property taxes.
Few if any will say property taxes are low or just about right. They are too high and getting higher. Recent content on the issue as it applies to housing locally (see also the “Housing CrisisTM“) remind us that school taxes are driving people out of their homes while emergency services are suffering.
A realignment in investment is needed, and I’m willing to bet you can convince people that struggling police or fire departments will give you a lot more value for a dollar than a school that can’t teach even half the kids to read at grade level despite their enormous budgets.
Welcome to Merrimack.
We have two issues here, both common to New Hampshire and worse than others in some smaller towns. You get Chiefs – Fire or Police – who become entitled. We’ve seen it with Police Chiefs in towns more than Fire Chiefs. They think they own and run the place and can do whatever the hell they want. I can’t speak directly about the situation above, and we’ve had plenty of bad things ot say about unions, but this is a symptom of something that’s not limited to my town.
There is also the mismanagement (Warren Ambulance, Crazy Londonderry) and now Merrimcak.
We have chiefs driving taxpayer-paid-for cars (gas, etc.) driving where? Just in time for town election season.
With property taxes so high, people may still be thinking it’s easier to let the school district burn through the money than pay to keep their own house from burning down. Police and fire have a lot more accountability, not just for how they spend or waste your money but the results.
Schools consume 70% of your property taxes (on average) with no accountability.
If you can’t stomach that idea – as in, you might be a moron living in the Kearsage School District – fire a few layers of middle-management bureaucratic administration at the SAU and hire a few cops or a firefighter or two. I guarantee you that learning assessment results will not get worse.
They might get better.
Most School budgets are funded in obscene excess. And we know money does not affect performance, but if you dare to suggest we tie them together, the Education Industrial Complex might come for you. Guess what? The cops and firefighters may just be in a position to have your back because until we dial back the public school waste, they will suffer almost as badly as the kids we force to attend those schools.
And if they suffer, your community suffers.
We need audits of SAUs and, apparently, public safety as well. And no one should get a dime until we find out where all that money is being wasted. Then cut.
