Good Lord. What is this, the bonus round for non-factual propaganda? A plea to 'keep up with the Joneses? a multi-stage sales pitch for a bad real-estate deal where the junior salespeople get to come in on the action and see if they can find a sucker? An emotional appeal to fork out money ,you know, for the kids? When the money is really going to a scammer sitting in Nigeria? Assuming that someone has come into this little party late in the game and knows nothing about the history on this bond scam, and the last one, let's run through a few things.
First, go to votenocleburne.blogspot.com or 2016cleburneisdschoolbond.blogspot.com for more information about this thing. Go to youtube and search for '*INSIDERS* EXPOSE CISD Bond!'. Look at the comments under all the other cleburne times review articles about the bond. Search google for '2016 Cleburne School Bond Scam'. Read craigslist rants and raves under 'all Dallas'. google Facebook Cleburne Gossip, and read additional information there.
Let's start with some of the newly discovered facts..
Turns out, if you're 65, your taxes WILL go up, because the bond will be over and done with before tax assessments in October. They keep saying 'If you're 65, you're taxes are frozen!' Not quite so. Plan on age 66, and that only applies to the address you live at in Cleburne, not your business or rental properties. Also, they never seem to mention that everyone who DOES have a business in Cleburne and has to raise their prices to cover the new taxes, will cause EVERYONE'S cost of living to go up, regardless of age.
It was said by the school administration until recently that, 'Our current high school is just TOO DARN SMALL'. Then, a couple of weeks back, when asked directly about it, Heath had to say, 'Well, we don't actually have a space issue with the classrooms, it's just that the hallways are crowded'. Like.. when the bell rings? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? This is like having to ask a 5 year old probing questions to get him to admit he had his hand in the cookie jar!
Per the Cleburne Times Review, when speaking to the Lions Club, Heath admitted that the administration has no architect as of yet, has no contractor hired, has had no feasibility studies done. All they have is two pictures to wave around to sell this thing, one of a photo shopped generic high school, and the other of the new layout of the grounds, which suspiciously looks like it has a new sports plex, including some new large locker rooms that could be part of a.. new football stadium. Here's what's so crazy. If they haven't had any of the studies done, haven't hired anyone, then HOW DO THEY KNOW how much any of this will cost? How do they know?
NONE of this money in this bond will go to increase the quality of education at CISD, unless you consider $2.5 million of electronic tablets they'll get for the kids, paid for by a bond meant for infrastructure, and will be out of date long before the bond is paid off. Sure, they say they'll have 'that part' of the bond paid for in 5 years, but that still means they are taking out a 5 year note on a $200 widget. That's crazy, and fiscally, kinda stupid.
The administration keeps going on about the state of disrepair the school is in. Are you kidding me? The people who are supposed to maintain this thing, and didn't, are complaining at the results of their incompetency? I don't recall the football program running short of money. I do recall the school spending absolutely stupid money on a hot dog stand at Wheat High School two years ago. These people have the fiscal responsibility of a kid in a toy store, and they want $130 Million Dollars of our money, plus interest, across 2 generations? Get real.
Let's talk about that hot dog stand. Go drive over to Wheat Middle School, and check it out. Ask the school for a tour. Heck, get wild and crazy, and AUDIT THE FINANCIALS ON THE THING. $277,000 they spent on this thing, when it was budgeted for $245,000, which is still stupid money for a hot dog stand. Go look up home prices in Cleburne. You can barely find a house that expensive, and when you do, it's a three store home with attached garage and a swimming pool! The CISD used that much money to build...
a hot dog stand. That will be used 8 times a year.
Let's talk about how we got here.
First, we've already gone through all this once, when they tried to sell a new football stadium, on a $150 Million Dollar Bond. So, knowing that we had all these problems with the school, because all of these 'issues' they're selling didn't just crop up in the last 2 years, so knowing the state of repair of Cooke, Coleman, the high school, they pitched a new football stadium. Which got voted down by the taxpayers of Cleburne, and rightly so. It was astoundingly stupid that it made it to a vote at all.
Now, here were are again, similar amount of money, but with a different sales pitch. Another bond steering committee packed with CISD employees, conflict of interest anyone? with everyone else experiencing attempted manipulation by the bond consultants, with the result that about 1/3 of the attendees just stopped coming. That manipulation was called 'The Delphi Technique' where a crowd is manipulated with 'false consensus' to come up with a pre-ordained result. Used by Time-Share salesmen around the world.
The administration ,the bond consultants, and the Cleburne PAC promoting this thing have been obtuse, tried to limit knowledge of the bond, have websites no more informative than fluff about it, have used $120,000 dollars of taxpayer money to promote this thing so far, on top of the LAST bond scam, have denigrated and demonized anyone with the bravery to disagree in public with them about the fiscal responsibility or educational potential of this bond, have done background checks on those folks I like to call 'FRC's', or, Fiscally Responsible Citizens, though they refer to them by the misnomer CAVE people. The Mayor has attempted to coin a phrase 'Don't mess with Cleburne! har har!' and fraudulently disenfranchise folks who, while living out of town, will still have properties they own in Cleburne affected by the bond. These same YES Matters people are now stealing and burning 'Vote NO' political signs, you should see the game camera footage! The fact that we are doing this again shows that the administration is going against the will of the people, because we already voted this thing down once.
How many times do we have to say no? Put together a bond that repairs the high school and Cooke and Coleman, audit CISD to find out where the money went that was SUPPOSED to repair the schools, consider firing anyone who promoted this bond scam, and then hire some people who have experience in better education instead of 'school expansion'. Develop an oversight committee that can put the brakes on spending BEFORE they cut the check. Get rid of conflicts of interest, like Mrs. Childress on the school board having direct and indirect control of funds paid to her husbands engineering company. Investigate who started this bond scam, and sue the crap out of them for spending $240,000 of taxpayer money over two bond proposals to promote this tripe.
Did you know the school can cut a check for $20,000 without having to report it to the school board, who even if itwas larger, would just rubber stamp it anyway? If you go to the school board meetings, did you know they hardly take minutes, so that there is no history of what they talk about, and when they do talk about anything other than giving awards and whatnot, they do it behind closed doors even though it is public monies they are discussing, and thus should be having that discussion in a public forum. Want to have some real fun? Start videotaping the school board meetings, and putting them up by date on youtube the way everyone else does. That way, you, the public, can see exactly how they are using YOUR money.
Vote this thing down everyone. Either these folks in the administration pushing this thing are really really incompetent, or, it's a scam that someone is planning on embezzling from. I honestly don't know which, but regardless, it needs to be voted down.
Vote NO!
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