Letters to the Editor for December 15, 2010
Published on Mon, Dec 13, 2010Read More Letters to the Editor
Education money should be spent on classrooms, not high adminstrator’s salaries
Dear Editor,
I agree with Mr. Holtzman that education is important and needs full funding. However I prefer money spent on teachers’ salaries and classrooms with decent buildings.
Currently it seems that administration sucks up much of that money into an overgrown bureaucracy with unjustified salaries.
The previous Lake Stevens superintendent had to resign after the Herald reported a salary of $250,000. A quarter million dollar salary for a school district the size of Lake Stevens seems a bit extravagant.
During this time of austerity among many of us in the private sector, stomaching salary increases by elected officials which they vote themselves becomes difficult. Case in point, the four percent salary increase the Monroe school board voted itself while they also debated closing a middle school.
If this happens on a local level, imagine what bureaucrats in Washington D.C. do? They are much further removed from the front line needs of our schools.
I agree that we must fund education. An educated populace is much more desirable than an illiterate one, and a basic oversight and standards throughout the country is needed.
But the money needs to go to the classroom, not the administrator’s pocket except for needed administration, not a bloated bureaucracy.
Why does a school need an attendance secretary when the same job could be performed by an RFID embedded in the student ID card. An RFID reader can be posted at the entry door to each classroom.
Companies ask us for higher productivity with fewer resources; can’t we ask the same from our administrators?
Cut the Superintendent’s salary by $100,000 and hire two more teachers or give 10 high performers a whopping raise and new books. The further the money is moved away from the local level the less chance it will make it back to the classroom where it belongs.
Curtis Green
Lake Stevens
The questions raised by Amy Hoffman in her well researched article published November 24 regarding the lack of financial disclosure and accountability from the Sewer District remain unanswered.
The Lake Stevens municipal government’s seemingly relentless pursuit of annexations (a.k.a. increasing tax revenues) and new housing developments in recent years has put a strain on the facilities and infrastructure of our Sewer District, or so we are told. Thus has been used as a justification for the continuously large rate increases.
As the new sewage disposal facility slowly nears completion, we must ask, where is the austerity here? From outside appearances, what a grand facility it will be.
A new sewer plant will be carried by the initial capital investment for awhile, however, what of the future? Can we trust the Sewer District to be fiscally responsible in order to provide needed maintenance and repairs?
The financial capacity should be there. The uncertainty is will the money still be earmarked for that purpose or siphoned off for new customer connections, or other priorities keeping us all in the dark and caught in this spiral of rate increases?
Richard M. Harvey
Lake Stevens
Get rid of the seventeenth amendment, create a smaller government
Dear Editor,
The debt commission has put forth many ideas that will lower our deficit, but they still won’t deal with the real issue which is out-of-control government.
In 2006, the civilian workforce employed by the federal government measured close to two million and the budget was over $3 trillion.
The Federal Register, compilation of rules issued by the federal government, contained nearly 75,000 pages of regulations. Congress continually passes laws that are beyond their authority and do more to limit our personal freedom.
The Constitution states, “The powers not delegated to the United State by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The federal government uses grants and other handouts to the states to get them to give their rights away and therefore standby and basically become a non-factor. The seventeenth amendment that changed the way senators were selected from the state legislature to popular vote, which took away the only meaningful voice our state legislatures have in the federal government.
It is time to reduce or “right-size” the federal government and move to cast aside the seventeenth amendment, re-establish a more federalist approach.
Todd Welch
Lake Stevens
Dear Editor,
I agree with Mr. Holtzman that education is important and needs full funding. However I prefer money spent on teachers’ salaries and classrooms with decent buildings.
Currently it seems that administration sucks up much of that money into an overgrown bureaucracy with unjustified salaries.
The previous Lake Stevens superintendent had to resign after the Herald reported a salary of $250,000. A quarter million dollar salary for a school district the size of Lake Stevens seems a bit extravagant.
During this time of austerity among many of us in the private sector, stomaching salary increases by elected officials which they vote themselves becomes difficult. Case in point, the four percent salary increase the Monroe school board voted itself while they also debated closing a middle school.
If this happens on a local level, imagine what bureaucrats in Washington D.C. do? They are much further removed from the front line needs of our schools.
I agree that we must fund education. An educated populace is much more desirable than an illiterate one, and a basic oversight and standards throughout the country is needed.
But the money needs to go to the classroom, not the administrator’s pocket except for needed administration, not a bloated bureaucracy.
Why does a school need an attendance secretary when the same job could be performed by an RFID embedded in the student ID card. An RFID reader can be posted at the entry door to each classroom.
Companies ask us for higher productivity with fewer resources; can’t we ask the same from our administrators?
Cut the Superintendent’s salary by $100,000 and hire two more teachers or give 10 high performers a whopping raise and new books. The further the money is moved away from the local level the less chance it will make it back to the classroom where it belongs.
Curtis Green
Lake Stevens
Sewer District rate increase continuum
The questions raised by Amy Hoffman in her well researched article published November 24 regarding the lack of financial disclosure and accountability from the Sewer District remain unanswered.
The Lake Stevens municipal government’s seemingly relentless pursuit of annexations (a.k.a. increasing tax revenues) and new housing developments in recent years has put a strain on the facilities and infrastructure of our Sewer District, or so we are told. Thus has been used as a justification for the continuously large rate increases.
As the new sewage disposal facility slowly nears completion, we must ask, where is the austerity here? From outside appearances, what a grand facility it will be.
A new sewer plant will be carried by the initial capital investment for awhile, however, what of the future? Can we trust the Sewer District to be fiscally responsible in order to provide needed maintenance and repairs?
The financial capacity should be there. The uncertainty is will the money still be earmarked for that purpose or siphoned off for new customer connections, or other priorities keeping us all in the dark and caught in this spiral of rate increases?
Richard M. Harvey
Lake Stevens
Get rid of the seventeenth amendment, create a smaller government
Dear Editor,
The debt commission has put forth many ideas that will lower our deficit, but they still won’t deal with the real issue which is out-of-control government.
In 2006, the civilian workforce employed by the federal government measured close to two million and the budget was over $3 trillion.
The Federal Register, compilation of rules issued by the federal government, contained nearly 75,000 pages of regulations. Congress continually passes laws that are beyond their authority and do more to limit our personal freedom.
The Constitution states, “The powers not delegated to the United State by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The federal government uses grants and other handouts to the states to get them to give their rights away and therefore standby and basically become a non-factor. The seventeenth amendment that changed the way senators were selected from the state legislature to popular vote, which took away the only meaningful voice our state legislatures have in the federal government.
It is time to reduce or “right-size” the federal government and move to cast aside the seventeenth amendment, re-establish a more federalist approach.
Todd Welch
Lake Stevens
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