Thursday, December 16, 2010

Havre High needs some Renovations

Anxious to start the demolition and build all new
I find it quite ironic that less than 2 weeks after we all have scrimped, borrowed, and begged enough to pay our ever increasing local property taxes (of which 65% go to fund our schools) we are hearing that the school board is working on plans for a major renovation on the high-school building. Wednesday’s Havre Daily “News” reported that school board heard a report from a consulting engineering firm about re-hab work at the high school which could end up with a price tag of 1.7 million dollars. Of course as soon as this dollar figure was disclosed to the board that first thing that popped into their collective heads was the thought of just forsaking everything and working towards building a NEW high school building. After all, the poor dilapidated building is 50 years old. Not to be out spent, the next thought brought to the table was the elementary school buildings which are even older than the high school. I recall we had to pass a mill levy increase just a few months ago just too barely make it thru the year but the economic times are certainly better now that we have all that Obama stimulating going on around the country.


I will be the first to dare say it out-loud -- Let’s just bull-doze all the school buildings and start over, after all there seems to be a never ending supply of property owners that we could tax into oblivion to fund all these lofty projects.

GO PONIES (let’s get a new luxury coach for the team also)




7 comments:

  1. Anytime a school hires consultants you can count on it costing us money. How much did this consulting cost us?
    My house is over 50 years old so according to Proctor and Christianson’s thinking it must be ready for condemnation also

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  2. Havre isn't alone in tax and spend education. North Star cut one teaching position in the grade school and combined two grades together. But they found the money to for new sod and landscaping in front of the high school. They also had the money to renovate the superintendents office and school board meeting room. What I heard that cost alone would have paid that teacher for three more years.
    I almost forgot the cute little signs in front of the school to tell everyone where to park. We wouldn't want the Superintendent to have someone park in his spot.

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  3. Cranky Farmer - If you take the time to check, I believe you will find that those things are funded and are from different sources. The school doesn't have one big money pile that everything comes out of.

    Many Federal grants are incredibly specific on the types of things you can spend the money on.

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  4. Sounds about right for a school board that thinks money grows on trees

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  5. After the Mahon travesty I expected dozens of people to run for school board and the mill levy would fail. I was wrong on both counts so it would seem the people of Havre like this pompous abuse of power and squandering of money the schools subject us to.

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  7. Surelyyoujest11, I believe you are absolutely correct. The money comes from different sources. That doesn't make it particularly right. This demonstrates part of our problem our entire governmental system is experiencing. Agencies are spending money on projects that are not important and unneeded. So much money is being wasted.

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