EDITORIAL: Voters show their wisdom

May 28, 2008 04:00 am

— For years, school boards and superintendents feared public votes in their districts on their next year's budgets. The feeling was that dissatisfied taxpayers, unable to adequately express themselves on municipal, county, state or national budgets, would take their resentment out on the only one over which they had the final say: their school budgets, which are the only ones put to public vote.
Generally speaking, though, voters have exhibited sophistication in voting on school budgets. Given reasonable spending plans and plausible explanations for the expenses they are being asked to support, they have been generous. They've shown that quality education means as much to them as tight spending controls. This is even true of voters who have no children or whose children have left the educational system.
Last year, every school budget in Clinton, Essex and Franklin counties passed -- all 27 of them. How can you account for that except with the notion that voters realize exactly what is at stake -- the importance of providing good education for the future of the children, the voters and the future of the community -- and their willingness to spend reasonably to ensure a good education will be available? In addition, voters apparently go to the polls armed with information that leads them to this conclusion. They clearly are not voting out of ignorance and fear.
Bolstering that assumption is this year's results. Of the 27 districts this year, 26 of them passed. The only one that didn't was Schroon Lake.
Why would Schoon Lake, among all the others, fail? Undoubtedly it was because of its 13.8-percent increase in the tax levy. That is a very sizeable jump in the levy, which is the amount of money that must come from local taxpayers, after all other sources of revenue are accounted for.
The voters passed a proposition to buy a school bus for $99,000, which shows they are not opposed to sensible spending. They simply felt that a 13.8-percent increase in the levy was not sensible. By their vote, they ordered the School Board to go back to work and come up with a more palatable budget, which it undoubtedly will.
In all other districts, the budget passed. Superintendents and school boards everywhere breathed a sigh of relief and could take some satisfaction from the fact that the public approved of their efforts, even in the most conservative districts. In AuSable Valley, for example, which has a history of critical oversight by an active taxpayer-advocacy group, the vote was a lopsided 505-355 in favor of the budget.
The lesson from this year's round of votes is obvious: Give the taxpayers a budget that gives the kids what they need while not taking a slice out of their own flanks, and they'll be supportive.
The system is working, and so are the boards and administrations.