“HATE TO SAY I TOLD YOU SO”

Waunakee School District suggests $175,000,000 price tag for November 2022 Building Referendum

_{NOTE – This article was edited on 8/6/22 to reflect the now $175 million price tag, as currently proposed.}

As I wrote in March and April, I have written with increasing alarm regarding what appears to be active disinformation of the public over a future referendum in the Waunakee Community School District.

I cannot express how much I wish I had been wrong.

On June 27, 2022, the Board agreed to a general referendum plan that will request at least $175 Million from taxpayers for the construction of a new Middle School (~$100M) and a new Elementary School (~$63M) and an additional $12M in other projects.

_{*** In full disclosure, this referendum planning started when I was on the BOE, as I was one voting member in favor of starting referendum planning in 2019, extending throughout 2020. So in some small way, I bear some responsibility for this monumental absurdity. ***}

The price tag for the same referendum projects as recently as February 2020 was literally $62,000,000 lower. Yes, you read that correctly. The WCSD BOE waited two years and the same projects (already needed) from 2020 are now claimed to cost $62,000,000 more.

And as I noted, a majority of the current Board of Education voted to delay referendum planning in 2020, without sufficient explanation, only to have costs spike dramatically in the intervening two years.

I am directly referring to Joan Ensign, Mark Hetzel, Judith Engebretson and Jack Heinemann.

Brian Hoefer played effectively no part in that decision. Ted Frey replaced me in 2021, and Katie Dotzler was elected in 2022, both playing no part in the decision to delay. I am hardly a fan of Mr. Frey or Ms. Dotzler, but they certainly bear no responsibility for the 2020 delay.

Will the Board or district respond to questions about how its decision to delay will cost taxpayers $62 million dollars?

This is not $62 million dollars that needed to be spent on building. That money could have funded dramatic increases in staff salaries, special education funding, giving benefits to para-professionals, decreasing health care and dental costs for employees, providing additional 4K to young families, lowering class sizes, expanding transportation services, staff training, etc. I could go on for hours about what it could have been better spent on.

Or as my more conservative friends might suggest, the district need not even take that $62 million from taxpayers at all.

What is most appalling about the BOE’s current pitch is that its own push-poll utilized only two months ago to justify the district’s desire to abandon downtown Waunakee and move the downtown elementary school (Heritage) next to new developments is already being ignored. The survey numbers, which I argued at the time used completely specious numbers, has already been abandoned by the district.

The following image is a screenshot from the District’s community survey in April 2022, purporting the planned costs for middle school options. Predictably, the community overwhelmingly picked the option that cost a proposed $88M when presented in contrast to $99.7M.

Last night, however, the Board accepted that building a new middle school “on the current Heritage site” will cost a predicted “$99.9 Million”. [Edit Note – this new MS will now cost over $100M] This renders any responses they received on their initial survey as utterly meaningless.

In short, the community was given the expectation of an option for $88 million, and is now being given a +$100 million price tag anyway, at a site that was preferential for its proposed lower price tag.

I am an ardent supporter of public schools. They are perhaps the greatest American invention and they are certainly the most important part of our community. I am personally extremely liberal and have never opposed a single public education referendum I have had the opportunity to vote for in my adult life.

I will be vehemently opposing the Waunakee Community School District’s proposed capital referendum in November 2022.

I will urge all community members of good conscience, fiscal responsibility, and prudent management to send a message that poor planning, dishonesty, and farcical attempts at manipulating the public have no place in our community. The district need only be honest with its plan, stick to it, and do what is in the best interests of everyone in the community.

I kept my name plate from my time on the Board. It reads, as you can see.

Has the district succeedeed here on any of these three?

This referendum should fail.