As we see, the Vote Yes campaign is co-chaired by Vernon Brown (Who was the co-chair of the Envision Task Force with Nan Baker) and has Stephanie Gongopoulos as the Treasurer. While it seems Nan is not involved (probably because of the bonds) it seems that conflict hasn’t changed much. It is NO secret that the bonds MAY go through First National Bank which is owned by the Baker family. Well guess what? Stephanie is Nan’s sister-in-law with the maiden name BAKER. As I have said before, if the bonds DO NOT go through First National there will not be a conflict issue, but if they do, it seems now they have TWO conflicts. There is also the question if the School District does any business with Vernon’s employer SDN? It looks like they do. This is something that should also be disclosed.
While I support new schools and bonding for them, we have a ton of unknowns; What is the final payoff of the bonds? $300 million? How will we pay for staffing? How much will our taxes compound over the 30 year payoff period? How will we vote (precincts)? Who will tabulate election? Who will handle absentees? Where will the precincts be? What are the locations of the new schools? Why are we not redistricting first? It seems to me they are looking to get a pile of money and figure it out later. A better approach would be to do this with the general election in November. This would give us time to redistrict and pick locations. This would also give us a more realistic number (I think we should scale it back to $100 million and ask for more money if we need it later). If you can’t trust the process, you can’t approve these bonds.