UPDATED: The City Council voted 5-2 to endorse the two proposed LWSD levies and bond but not before Susan Wilkins, citizen activist, spoke up to warn them to act carefully, as follows:
Ms. Wilkins said that 23 of 30 elementary schools are already overcapacity and the new bond wouldn't fully resolve the overcrowding problem. Alcott has the most dire overcrowding with 227 students in 8 portables.
The scope of portable usage in elementary schools is significant with 91 portables district-wide. Wilkins said 1822 elementary students use portables for their classrooms. The 2014 bond, if it passed would create 1615 seats by 2016 which is still below present and mid-term needs. The three new elementary schools do not completely address the crisis with portables and modernization of Meade, Kirk, and Rockwell won't happen for 7-8 years. And by that time the schools will be severely overcrowded, Wilkins said.
Wilkins also said the District has understated the cost of the two Levies and Bond. She conceded that while the measures may cost the average $450,000 home $30/month in 2014 total costs for the measures will escalate to $80/month by 2018. "People deserve to know what they're voting for", concluded Wilkins.
Byron Shutz,of the Bond and Levy Committee and now Redmond Councilman-elect, was present but had nothing to say. All councilmembers made positive remarks about LWSD in support of the measures.
Reported by Bob Yoder
Ms. Wilkins said that 23 of 30 elementary schools are already overcapacity and the new bond wouldn't fully resolve the overcrowding problem. Alcott has the most dire overcrowding with 227 students in 8 portables.
The scope of portable usage in elementary schools is significant with 91 portables district-wide. Wilkins said 1822 elementary students use portables for their classrooms. The 2014 bond, if it passed would create 1615 seats by 2016 which is still below present and mid-term needs. The three new elementary schools do not completely address the crisis with portables and modernization of Meade, Kirk, and Rockwell won't happen for 7-8 years. And by that time the schools will be severely overcrowded, Wilkins said.
Wilkins also said the District has understated the cost of the two Levies and Bond. She conceded that while the measures may cost the average $450,000 home $30/month in 2014 total costs for the measures will escalate to $80/month by 2018. "People deserve to know what they're voting for", concluded Wilkins.
Byron Shutz,of the Bond and Levy Committee and now Redmond Councilman-elect, was present but had nothing to say. All councilmembers made positive remarks about LWSD in support of the measures.
Reported by Bob Yoder
They're only going to spend $4.8 on site improvements for athletic fields and play grounds and part of that money will be used to upgrade parking lots. I thought improving playgrounds was really high on the list of what people wanted and yet they'll spend only 3% of the levy money on it. They also will spend $28.5 million to replace all the netbooks. (My kids have netbooks and they aren't worth all the money that the district has paid for them -- and now they're going to replace them all with more netbooks!)
ReplyDeleteSave Juanita Pool
ReplyDeleteWhat is a rubut?
ReplyDeleteclaim or prove that (evidence or an accusation) is false.
ReplyDelete"he had to rebut charges of acting for the convenience of his political friends"
synonyms: deny, contradict, controvert, repudiate, counter, attempt to refute, attempt to discredit; More
Blessed are the ACTIVISTS. For they point out actual facts to mitigate the accolades of the strident LWSD PR machine and bleating of the expert fund raisers doing their best to convince us thatQL the district can do no wrong.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a bigger issue is the massive population growth planned for Redmond which is concentrated in multi-famliy units. Did you know that LWSD charges only a $207 impact fee for an apartment / condo, but $6,302 for a single family home?
ReplyDeleteSo, the school impact fee for an apartment is only 3% of the cost for a house. But it turns out that readily available stats show that apartments have a very similar % of children in the household as a house. Why are homeowners expected to foot the school-facilities bill for the ongoing construction of thousands of apartments in downtown Redmond and Overlake?
Households with children sources: National MultiFamily Housing Council (23% for rentals), National Association of Homebuilders (34% for all dwellings)
Impact fees for apartments should be much higher. Thank you for sharing this information. What I'd like to know is what does the LWSD do with all their impact fee collections? They are very non-transparent about it. With all the building going on around here asking for 3/4 billion dollars in bond money sounds excessive.
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