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<DIV><FONT face=geneva,arial,sans-serif size=2>Citizen Ament (hey, Aaron!) writes:</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=geneva,arial,sans-serif size=2>"grade configuration is not a facilities issue. keep it separate."</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=geneva,arial,sans-serif size=2>I'm not sure how to keep configuration separate from facilities. We can plan our grade configuration to fit the existing facilities, or we can plan new facilities to fit our existing (or future) configuration, but they are pretty closely connected. After all, who's in the building affects how it's built and used.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>School configuration is a volatile issue--like the bond!--and there's a lot of emotion connected to particular models. Although it made sense to me to pair a change in configuration with a change in the physical structures, I think it may have been just too much change for some people.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The rest of Aaron's recommendations rest on the possibility of passing a larger bond than the one which just went down, and doing so after the last bond has been retired, with its concomitant drop in taxes. It's more expensive to remodel than it is to build new, I'm told, and the cost of getting a remodelled high school which could meet the technological and educational needs of students would not be insignificant. There's the problem of putting students somewhere while the changes are made. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>There would certainly be resistance--as fierce and passionate as the resistance from neighbors of the Trail property--from the owners of all the property which the district acquired by eminent domain. </FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>It's a time consuming process, and a painful one, taking people's property away from them. The community would certainly divide over *that* decision.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I'm perplexed by what a next step in this business might be. A larger bond will, of course, be completely unacceptable to many people in the community. A couple of small bonds? The first one might go, but I bet the second one wouldn't. And how to decide which project to take on first? *Any* bond will be unacceptable to a sufficient number of people to create something of a challenge. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I'm afraid we are headed down the road that Troy has walked, and we will find ourselves with a condemned school building, no funding, and a community that's unwilling to pay the ever-growing cost of solving the problem. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Melynda Huskey </FONT></DIV></BODY>