Last week both local newspapers published articles about flooding problems with District 64 schools (“District 64: Bond issue, tax hike mulled to fund $2.8M flooding fix,” Herald-Advocate, Jan. 26; “Call For School Drainage Repairs,” Journal, Jan. 26).
According to those articles, Carpenter and Franklin Schools need approximately $2.8 million to remedy flooding. The H-A reported that the auditorium at Carpenter “is unusable due to the flooding issues” and needs “drastic attention,” while Franklin needs an underground water detention vault and a new storm sewer.
And in case flooding isn’t problem enough, we recently (in November 2010) learned that Carpenter is unsafe because of inadequate heat and no air conditioning.
Are all these pressing needs that must be attended to immediately? Frankly, we don’t know, although it sure sounds that way.
But what’s suspicious to us is that these problems are the kinds of things that just don’t spring up overnight. Yet in this case these seem to have…just sprung up overnight.
Back in November we started hearing (in the local newspapers) about the problems with the Carpenter heating system, as well as the complaints about Carpenter having no air conditioning. But back then there was no mention of flooding – and especially not the kind of flooding that makes an auditorium “unusable.”
But a review of the minutes of the November 15, 2010, District 64 school board meeting discloses comments by Carpenter 1st Grade teacher Lisa Gray and Carpenter parents Brett Parker, Jennifer Gallery and Colleen Straka raised complaints about some of these conditions, although those minutes reflect that only Ms. Gray reported any water issue, which she described not in terms of “flooding” but as “water and mold in the basement.”
In the past we’ve been critical of local government management that downplays or ignores problems until they reach crisis proportions, at which point they become “emergencies.” We question whether that has been allowed to happen here.
But we also wonder why, given all of the additional tax revenues District 64 has taken in since the 2007 tax increase referendum, the District 64 board is talking about a bond issue and a tax increase to cover that $2.8 million cost.
Where has all that money gone?
3 comments so far
If you drive by Carpenter the date on the building says 1950 and Franklin was built 6 years later.
What took Dist. 64 so long to ask for help?
Maybe the city and the park district should reconsider their proposed flood relief plan for North Park and re-evaluate Northwest Park, only this time include D64 in the discussions.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As we understand it, North Park is being considered as kind of a test-case for this particular paradigm of flood relief because it is among the least-used of the Park District’s parks, unlike Northwest Park. Consequently, any damage to the North Park fields will be less disruptive (and less expensive to remediate) than at other more-utilized/more programmed fields like Northwest Park.
That being said, we would hope the City sits down with both the Park District and D-64 when formulating anti-flooding initiatives that involve Park District property adjacent to D-64 schools. But we still wonder why we weren’t hearing about flooding in the basement of Carpenter that prevents use of its auditorium prior to the last few weeks.
You know where all of the money went. Not into infrastructure repair and improvements, that’s for sure.
EDITOR’S NOTE: You’re not suggesting it went into employee salaries, benefits, and the restoration of programs that had previously been cut with the assurance that their absence would not adversely affect the quality of D-64 education, are you?
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>