Stacey and I did our civic duty yesterday and voted. Everyone knew that the country was going to get more red and less blue, so I'm really not writing this post to talk about that. I'm writing about the state, county and local issues that were presented to the voters. Overall...man, what a waste of time! The ballot was covered with mostly bad to really bad ideas. I feel safe in saying this since most of them were defeated and that I was in the majority on the majority of the issues.
Amendments 60, 61, and 101 were some of the largest losers in addition to 62. These 4 were defeated by an average of over 70%. It makes me wonder how things like this can even get on the ballot...but I guess if it was too difficult things would never get done.
I was really hoping that the D49 school bond and property tax issue would get approved. It was narrowly defeated, probably because a lot of the people that live on this side of town have lower incomes, likely to be more anti-tax, are more transient, and the overall timing was bad related to the current state of our government and economy. In short, it would have probably increased people's average taxes around $6-$10 a month. It would have been used to upgrade our schools and build new schools to cope with the overcrowding that's taking place in this area since it's loaded with young families. We just built a brand new high school and this would have also increased its capacity to 1600 (that's more students then the school I graduated from). The high school would have also gotten an auditorium, additional athletics field, etc. This would have improved the capacity issues at both the middle school and high school our kids will be eligible to attend (should we decide to go that route).
At the very least, I was hoping it was pass so that it would help keep our property values high. If things get too crowded this area won't be as desirable and people will buy elsewhere, lowering our home values. More concerning, it will change the TYPE of people buy homes here. I hope the district might still be able to build some of these new schools and expand others through other non-voting avenues. I don't see this issue getting any better in the near future, so it will probably be addressed and fixed in the coming years anyway. Well, at least that's my hope.