Be Careful What You Wish For

The lead editorial for The Olathe News, October 13-15, lamented low voter participation for the coming school bond issue. Are citizens “lazy, uninformed or apathetic”, as the editorial concludes?

Despite the district sending brochures home with students, direct mailing, e-mails, and text messages reminding voters to vote, only ¼ of eligible voters have voted. How can this be? Despite myriad meetings of staff members, the bond task force, board meetings tweaking the plan, and special editions of the newspaper, ¾ of the community responsible for paying for the bill have not weighed in.

Why not?

The editorial says “We can’t hold the district accountable.”

On the contrary, I believe it is precisely the district that should be held accountable.

The bond task force was tasked with the responsibility of developing informed recommendations for the future of the district. They did. Among their recommendations were grade reconfigurations and a call for a significantly higher bond.

The former recommendation was pursed with diligence by the district by repeated presentations by more task forces. The latter recommendation was never considered at all.
Why create a bond task force if this was to be the result?

What was the result of the educational campaign to convince voters of the grade reconfiguration? A firm was employed to find this out. A vast majority of the citizens, having been subjected to the educational campaign, said either they were against reconfiguration, or they were not sure. The firm surprisingly concluded voter education might sway such voters. How did they reach this conclusion? They don't say.

The board itself voted in favor of the measure, despite evidence to the contrary in front of them. Why conduct the survey if the results were inevitable? The board provided no answers.

And to make matters worse, to me, was the “political calculation” of the final bond dollar amount: $138 million. Where did this number come from? I can only guess the sound of "one hundred forty-something" didn't sound good. What is the relationship of this final amount to anything in reality? We were not shown.

The numbed voter understandably views this whole process with disgust and distrust. The district creates a bond task force to generate recommendations, and then discards them. The district employs a firm to gauge “the pulse of the voter”, and then discards this information. The district finally pulls a bond amount out of thin air with nothing more than political calculation, and, adding insult to injury, tells us this is the result of a multi-year process involving the community. Nonsense.

And the crushing blow: it’s our fault because we don’t vote.

To me, the message of the average eligible voter is clear: a non-vote is a reluctant "yes" to a process they know has not made sense. With the influx of students in our district, they realize more schools must be built. That much makes sense. But be careful what you wish for: collect our money while calling us lazy, uninformed or apathetic and you may get the precious voter turnout you desire, and you may not like the results.