Municipal Bonds Equal Voluntary Bondage !

This is a picture of the new Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex that will open in Los Angeles next month. Built on the site of the former Ambassador Hotel where Senator Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, it is a 578 million dollar K-12 project which when done, will drip with opulence on a scale rarely seen in an educational setting.

The school will feature things like fine arts murals, talking benches, and a massive, ornate Cocoanut Grove auditorium. It will have underground parking, a state-of-the-art swimming pool, and a faculty lounge superior to many fine restaurants. It will also include portions of the original Ambassador Hotel for historic purposes, and a marble mural to commemorate the late Senator Kennedy.

At the price tag mentioned, this school is now the most expensive ever built in the United States. And when you divide that into a per student average, it may turn out to cost a cool quarter million dollars for each child who will attend. Now, we’re talking about the building, here. The cost beyond that to staff and maintain the school, has not yet been publicly announced.

Obviously, in this terrible economy many people are justifiably upset at such an astounding expenditure of taxpayer money. Compounding that, this school is being built in a district that presently suffers a 640 million dollar operating deficit. Not only has it laid off over 3,000 classroom teachers in the last two years, it has had to cut many of its educational programs, and reduced the total number of days that kids are in school, as well.

Not coincidentally, LAUSD also stands out as one of the lowest performing school districts in the United States. With a student dropout rate of thirty-five percent or better, how less impressive could its credentials be?

The furor over this educational “Taj Mahal,” however, has lost much of its steam because of how the school district got the money to build it in the first place. Not part of its regular budget, the funding came from voter-approved bonds passed to the tune of twenty billion dollars. Yes indeed! Gullible Los Angeles voters once again came to the rescue of a failing school system when it begged for funds to build new schools. And once again, they got some bureaucrat’s vision of reality.

Here’s the point. The more money you vote the government or any of it’s agencies, the more outlandish they will be in spending it. Bureaucrats are not in the business of building strong public entities that benefit people and strengthen society. They’re in the business of building monuments to themselves. To them, it’s never about efficacy, it’s all about legacy.

In the past, then, I have not been a friend of bond issues. So the chance I will ever vote to pass one in the future, (whether it’s for mothers, American flags, or apple pie), seems remote. Of course, that might change if a bond comes along that solves peoples’ issues with ingenuity, fearlessness, and permanence . When James Bond runs for something, then, he gets my vote!