Lynn Janes

After watching 8-9 presentations (I lost count) by William Hawkins, superintendent of Silver Consolidated Schools, on the special election for an increased mill levy on our property taxes I have come away with some thoughts.

I am not writing this to say I am for or against just merely propose some observations that I hope makes some people including the education community think. It is not my intention to trigger anyone.

The biggest thing that hit each time I heard how bad the Cliff School was and how it needed to be demolished and rebuilt. Cliff schools continually, and for years has had the highest achieving students with the highest scores. In the same presentation they said, "We have to provide our students with the best education." Seems a little ironic. I have no doubt Cliff's facility does need to be rebuilt but I will touch on that later. The building does not coincide with the quality of education obviously.

The cost of this election has not been given to the public. At one point Hawkins had been asked this and he quickly said $20,000 and moved on. I also cover every Cobre Consolidated School Board meeting. A few times they discussed doing a special election to raise their mill levy. They had come out and said it had cost them $25,000 six years ago to do a special election and they had been unsuccessful. They said they wasted that $25,000. A company Cobre had hired to help with this issue out of Albuquerque had joined them online and she said they would be charged $1.50-$3.00 per voter depending on the county to do a special election. That tells me this special election will cost Silver far more than $20,000. They sincerely failed in transparency here and the public had the right to know this information. If they waited until next year, it would not cost them anything. The districts can request a mill levy increase election on odd years without a cost to the district. The district has said this year because of legislation they had lost a lot of funding, and I have no doubt of that but how will they be affording to pay for the special election?

We have been pummeled with rising costs on everything everywhere and they want us to take on a huge increase in one fail swoop. They did apologize for doing this in the meetings and took responsibility for not doing it sooner and thereby being able to do it in smaller increments. The presentation pushed over and over how much less we pay in property taxes here compared to others. Were we supposed to feel guilty? Was that the "message?" By looking at the average the other districts seem to be 7-9 mill levy according to the graphs Hawkins provided. The fact is the state will only make them eligible for the waiver if they have at least a 10 mill levy and the reason for the sharp increase. That is something you all can come to your own conclusions about and do the research.

The district facilities have not been fully utilized. They have a capacity of over 4,000 students and now have just a little over 2,000. This is not new. They have not been filled for some time. Enrollment decreases every year and has been doing so for some time. Hawkins had a graph that went back to 2008 showing considerably fewer student. Why has this not been a conversation followed by action years ago? The schools have been wasting $1.5 million a year on maintenance and utilities according to Hawkins. Really, again, how come this has not been addressed long ago? The master plan recommends "right sizing" and consolidating two schools to one. Hawkins said they would be developing a task force to decide if they would consolidate and that it would all take 5 years IF they do consolidate them. I realize anything government takes a long time, but this is ridiculous. Again, should have happened years ago.

Now to touch back on the need to demolish the Cliff Schools and rebuild it except for the rock building and new gym. Hawkins showed a slide of the school and all the separate buildings that would be demolished and replaced with one big institutional building. So, my question as soon as I saw that. Why have you not been taking a smaller bite and rebuilding each building one at a time. Might have been able to if not wasting $1.5 million a year on maintenance and utilities for schools not fully utilized for many years.

Hawkins said the main reason for the push to do this had to do with the higher waiver the state offered until 2024. The state's reason given said they have so many funds being left on the table. In the past the schools had to provide 94 percent, and the state would provide 6 percent of a project. Until the end of 2024 they have changed that to 63 percent for the district and the state will match 37 percent. This is supposed to end this year but may or may not be implemented again depending probably funding on the table not being used again.

Again, this is not meant to trigger anyone, just make you think. I urge you to consider this with an open mind. The issues encompass far more than some new buildings and throwing more money to taxes. These will be things that need to be addressed no matter if the GO bond passes or does not. The issues with all our schools in New Mexico go far beyond what I have presented in this editorial and throwing more money will not solve it. It never has.