The Observation Deck

OMG!! I could not believe this post!! After meeting you and seeing that you cared about Lakewood and have a child on the way I could not believe the $2 a month extra would be worth putting out messages against one of the best things going for Lakewood!!!! You want a guarantee that your house will appreciate, well it surely won't without this!!!

The security in the new schools are to be rivaled by all other cities!!! With the school shootings happening in every community, that alone is worth anything!!! The Lakewood High Choir just came back from performing in Carnegie Hall!! The Special Education program starts in pre-school here and is phenomenal!!! No one knows if their child will need those extra services one day! Every teacher my child has had for nine years has been exceptional!

I absolutely cannot think of money better spent and I HATE the high taxes here! Almost as much as the gas bills on these old homes, but I am here because these schools are what I want for my children. And all that aside, the 42 million we WON'T get if this doesn't pass should be incentive enough.

I PRAY the school will do better with residency check-ups, but why wouldn't we want the best regardless? This is not an attack, I am truly shocked and saddened by this post.

I will start by saying I voted FOR issue 4 today.

The reason I am posting here is to vent a little about how this process has gone. When the first bond was up they mentioned that it was a 3 part phase but really didn’t get into details about how much they would be. From talking with a lot of people many didn’t realize that there were even going to be 3. Most that I have asked even assumed that the third phase will be entirely paid for by the state funds (which I understand has the potential to disappear anyway if the legislature changes anything in the next 4 years). I was told by Geiger that their will be a third phase and it will be a tax increase.

I am OK with paying more for the schools. I really believe they will be beneficial. I also like people being upfront, even if it hurts their cause. My thought is that if the PRO campaign really laid out all the facts during the first phase it would have failed.

We cannot change the past; I just hope that future projects and campaigns will be honest, even at their own expense.

Ryan

I think that it would have been avirtual impossibilty to have handled the fianancing for a project that will take a decade with a single bond issue. This project had to phased. No way around that, given the need to keep schools running while construction was underway. So, while you could design the renovations for Horace Mann and Emerson in 2003, there would be no way to determine what the cost would be 5 years later. Worse still, phase 3 which would have required an 8 year crystal ball.

We were told there would be three phases. We could not be told what the costs would be, because there was no responsible way of giving an accurate figure. (During library bidding, both a Chinese corner on the steel market and Hurricane Katrina played havoc with RELIABLE construction estimates, based on approved designs). THe board has approached this responsibly.

Jeff

Jeff,

I completely understand your point. I am not suggesting in any way that I expected exact figures, just more details. I know that most of the voters didn't pay any attention to anything, I can attest to that just from standing at the polls this morning. I think that they deserved to know right up front that if the 1st 2 didn't pass the state would not pitch in, this is popular now, but it wasn't during the first phase. They also should have known that the state funding isn't given to us until 2011, which allows a lot of time for laws and funding to interfere, and they should have also known right up front that the 3rd phase would be another increase.

Like I said earlier, I voted for the first 2 and will vote for the 3rd, I just feel their "secret campaign" could have been better handled.

Lakewood Schools Lakewood Schools
100% OF PRECINCTS REPORTING

For 3,537 68%

Against 1,688 32%



from fox8cleveland.com

Mr. Juris has a right to his opinion.

We are a highly taxed city. I applaud people that want to save our tax dollars. I am delighted our Gov. is doing something to help Senior Citizens regarding property tax and I pray that the state finally comes up with a better way to fund schools that is more fair.

Shawn, I am pleased to see that you are going to be on the Chamber board. It is nice to have a financial watchdog there. I think we need to have everyone's perspective. And you are voicing what a lot of people do say.

But I think Mr. Endress's post is also enlightening. It is extremely exciting to see what the schools are doing. But for someone that has been downsized, outsourced or forced to take early retirement and just wants to stay in the home they have lived in all their lives - taxes hurt and everytime we vote for more of them, we need to consider both sides of the issue.

So lets be fair, this may have been the most reasonable tax increase in a while - but Mr. Juris is speaking for a great many people who are fed up with taxes - many of whom didn't even realize their was an election yesterday.

Well thanks Lynn.
Gotta love the way that civic and professional involvement in your community can be used against you when the natives don't like what you're saying. Heaven forbid there's a difference in opinion or a method is questioned.

Shawn Juris wrote:Well thanks Lynn.
Gotta love the way that civic and professional involvement in your community can be used against you when the natives don't like what you're saying. Heaven forbid there's a difference in opinion or a method is questioned.

Shawn

The entire Observer Deck is about civic discourse. Everyone on the board is dedicated to the discussion. we might not always be on the same page, we might never be on the same page, but we feel the discussion is the best way to reach a consensus. Of course the Advisory Board rarely agrees on anything, and that is always amusing.

For some reason you feel if the opinion differs from yours it must be an attack or wrong. The Board feels you have earned a right at the table, and we hope you always present your views, framed with whatever information you bring.

Shawn, you and I see Lakewood very differently but I will always fight for your right to voice your opinion.

Issue 4. Now that that is behind us, you will see us go after the schools and the way they spend money, come up short, and all the little problems that need to be aired. But we needed the schools finished. Without them done, the rest of the discussion is moot. Now if we move fast enough the operating levy might not be needed. If we think the waste is what we believe it is, the levy might not be needed.

But the schools had to be finished, and not with bake sales.

You make valid points, and I hope I do as well.

peace


.

Shawn, it's not your imagination. The deck has a perspective and either you're with it or you're wrong. Taxes are high, people aren't happy about it and regardless of the case that's made, perception is reality. If the perception is wrong, it will have to be fixed but until then...

Suzanne Metelko wrote:Shawn, it's not your imagination. The deck has a perspective and either you're with it or you're wrong. Taxes are high, people aren't happy about it and regardless of the case that's made, perception is reality. If the perception is wrong, it will have to be fixed but until then...

Suzanne

If there is no agenda, and no one compares notes on the advisory board, and we rarely talk as a unit. How is that even possible is my question.

There is no set discussion just many voices.

Taxes are high. I do not remeber anyone saying they were not high enough.


FWIW


.

Shawn,

I'd be interested to hear your perspective, as former community chair of the youth master plan, how a negative vote on issue 4 would further the YMP vision of building a community where "all youth and families belong and thrive".

Please elaborate. Seriously.

After your disappearance from the youth master plan community meetings, following your resignation from the chair position, my CAT team was visited by a representative from Junior Achievement. She came on your request.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Youth Master Plan, you can check out the excellent YMP website constructed by John Guscott of the Lakewood Library Technology Center. http://www.lakewoodymp.com/index.html

CAT stands for Community Action Team. My group is concerned with education.

The woman from Junior Achievement made a brief appearance, arriving late and departing early. She promised to make every future meeting for the remainder of the program because the YMP was "important" to her and her agency.

That was over 2 months and 5 meetings ago... we haven't seen her since.

What's Junior Achievement?

From their website: http://www.ja.org/about/about.shtml
"Through age-appropriate curricula, JA programs begin at the elementary school level, teaching children how they can impact the world around them as individuals, workers and consumers. JA programs continue through the middle grades and high school, focusing on the key content areas of entrepreneurship, work readiness, and financial literacy."

Entrepreneurship, work readiness, and financial literacy?

Never mind the humanities, science, mathematics and art. With JA, Lakewood can capitalize on the expanding niche of telemarketing employment.

The rhetoric of "individuals, workers and consumers" also rings hollow with this Uranian gen x'er. In terms of demographic focus, this is a class specific change operation.

JA embodies the spirit of the times, a place at which we've arrived following the slow decline from citizen to consumer.

It's instructive that JA is molding "individuals, workers and consumers"
rather than, say a more upscale mix globally competitive professionals.

Worker= working class

For the uninitiated, work readiness is PC for service sector, low skills vocational training.

Here's the board of directors:
http://www.ja.org/involved/involved_vol_who_board.shtml

While not a charter school, JA is another form of private sector intervention(via supplementation) on the values, norms and pedagogy of traditional public and parochial educational systems.

However, although disseminating a curriculum of entrepreneurship, work readiness and financial literacy in the class room, JA was not able to bring these values to the table at the Youth Master Plan, establish a stake and integrate within the community milieu.

The education CAT team has not seen JA or Shawn Juris since JA PR literature was dropped on our table, or in Shawn's case, well before.

Peace and God Bless the 'Wood,
Dan

Suzanne Metelko wrote:Shawn, it's not your imagination. The deck has a perspective and either you're with it or you're wrong. Taxes are high, people aren't happy about it and regardless of the case that's made, perception is reality. If the perception is wrong, it will have to be fixed but until then...

I completely agree, Suzanne. Posting here can be an exercise in frustration. Either you agree with the established perspective or you are made to feel like you are part of the problem.

Rick,

I would suggest that what some mistake as the slant of the deck is actually the challenge to clarify their perspective within the contrast of opposing views.

When the ability to clarify is limited by underdeveloped or unconscious ideological restraints, some may feel that the deck is "slanted".

The feeling of restriction or slant is often times self-imposed by the agent disseminating the message.

Dan

Dan Slife wrote:Rick,

I would suggest that what some mistake as the slant of the deck is actually the challenge to clarify their perspective within the contrast of opposing views.

When the ability to clarify is limited by underdeveloped or unconscious ideological restraints, some may feel that the deck is "slanted".

The feeling of restriction or slant is often times self-imposed by the agent disseminating the message.

Dan

Dan,

Thanks for the college-talk, and thank you for proving my point.

Who exactly is the deck?

What exactly constitutes this "the vast ...... (wingnut) conspiracy" of invisible college graduates frustrating the silent majority?

Please name names.

It's campaign season. Vast overgeneralizations to make political hay will likely be the mode of the day.

It's put been put up or shut up from day one.

Why the whining over debate and divergent opinions?

Kenneth Warren