FINANCIAL

In the area of finances our biggest issue at the present time is the upcoming school bond, actually, to put it more accurately, our biggest financial issue is how do we maintain our school facilities over the long term. The current school bond is just a small portion of what should be a much longer-term plan. If I’m not mistaken, the estimated useful lifespan of the new Wickford middle school will be approximately 50 years, every one of our other schools except for the high school is already 50 years or older. Using that estimate we can assume that we will need a new school every 10 years at a minimum. There has been no discussion about this reality. My fear is that if we do not clearly communicate to the taxpayers a long-term plan, they may approve this bond, but when the need arises for another, they will feel deceived and vote down needed funding in the future.

Another financial area that must be addressed is ongoing maintenance of our present school buildings. And we cannot assume that a new school building will require zero maintenance. Our high school which is less than 25 years old has already consumed millions in repairs and still needs millions more in repairs. In order to ensure the maximum useful lifetime of our buildings we must build into our annual budget, a dollar amount that is sufficient to perform that maintenance, and keep up with repairs. We should not be asking the taxpayers to approve bonds for routine repairs and maintenance to our buildings. Bonds should only be used for major purchases such as a new school.

Asking taxpayers for such significant amounts of money for our school system is not an easy conversion to have. We must develop long-term plans and show the taxpayers a well thought out process to sustain our schools. Nobody likes to pay more in taxes, but there needs to be a long-term plan that can provide people the insight to know what will be required in the future. This is far better than leading taxpayers to believe this current bond will fix all our problems, and then come back in a few years asking for more money.

We also need to address financial support for the items our educators need to effectively teach our children. I need to do more research and ask more questions on this topic, but I hear and see comments about teachers and parents having to take money out of their pocket for things needed in the classroom. If this is true, I think we should find a way to provide those materials, no teacher should have to take money out of their pocket to educate their students, and no parent should have to provide basic educational materials.

We may also be able to realize the financial savings if we investigate combining our purchases with other cities or towns such as East Greenwich or Warwick or South Kingstown. If we could combine our needs into larger volumes, it stands to reason we could purchase things at a greater discount and save the district money. If we collaborated with other cities and towns, it would also lessen the burden of doing market research and requests for proposals, as that responsibility could be spread amongst those other districts willing to work with us. This may or may not work but it’s just one way of thinking outside the box to save taxpayer money. I would encourage all citizens to look at our budget and give us any input they might have on how we could save on those things we need or already routinely purchase.