To the Editor:

Enough! Next week we go to vote on school district budgets and enough is enough. Every year it’s the same thing. We just need to raise the budget a little because it's for the kids. Well how about we have to get our financial house in order! The one fact they always hide is how many kids are in the district.

Let’s take my district Lisbon. They want to raise the budget from $16,013,511.00 to $17,249,863.00. A simple phone call let me know that Lisbon has 619 students. So let me get this straight, they want to spend $27,867.00 per student? You mean you couldn’t do it at last year’s $25,890.00 per student? Because I know there is kids in college right now paying less for an education including room and board!

Two years ago the Lisbon Superintendent appeared before the Town Council trying to get the Town to pay for half of his ridiculous bus garage project. When asked how many buses they were buying. He said we need 8, we would be better with 9. So how many did he buy? The answer is 12! About $450,000.00 for buses he didn’t need and now wants to buy 12 electric buses at $250,000.00 a piece. Then he tried to get us to build him a $16,000,000.00 bus garage. The last project I worked on doing commercial construction was a heated and insulated commercial building twice the size and it was $2.5 million just for comparison.

I know I’ve digressed from the main issue but maybe this will put it in perspective. In 2007 New York was 65% higher than the national average on per student education cost. We are now at an unbelievable 89% higher than the national average! California a state that is as equally fiscally irresponsible spends $21,596.00. While Connecticut, and New Jersey spend just slightly over $20,000.00.

So like I said enough is enough! We have a declining population, no fiscal responsibility in Albany, and let’s face it we the taxpayers need relief. If you Superintendents, and School Boards can’t get your fiscal house in order, then maybe you should step aside. But since they won’t it's up to us to start rejecting things like $28,000.00 per student school budgets! So vote NO on Tuesday and send a message that we've had enough because they’re spending Too Damn Much!

Russ Finley
Lisbon