Here is the speech I gave at the recent public Pickens Delegation regarding the Hiott-Skelton Bill adding a 7th school board seat. Not too long ago (2005) the voters of Pickens County voted down a bond referendum of $197 million dollars for school buildings by a margin of 2 to 1. Your constituents felt it was too much spending. The next year, the school board, exploited a loophole in the law in order to pass a $315 million dollar school building plan. The school board then increased the plan numerous times to a whopping $380 million dollars. Where was the limit for spending? Where was the care in the wants of the people they worked for? A new six member school board was elected in 2010, with one each from Clemson, Easley, Six Mile, Pickens, Liberty and Dacusville. Equal representation that reflects the conservative values of this county. Easley had the last project in the building program, enough money for the renovation of the two middle schools, however, the list of wants grew and the budget blew sky-high. They came back to the school board for even more money, and the new board said, “No” – stating that the voters didn’t want the $197 million referendum in the first place, or the eventual doubling in the amount of spending passed by the board and said: Enough is enough. You have stated your own individual reasons for considering an additional seat. For example, Representative Hiott wants an odd number of seats. Senator Martin wants the seats to better match attendance lines. I think we all know this is a result of overspending on one middle school and a desire to spend more on a second middle school. Our current school board has instead chosen to put more teachers back to work in the classroom which is good for our children’s education and benefits our community. The people of this county love our teachers and the fine job they do educating our children-let’s keep it that way. Let’s not put ourselves in a position to lay off teachers again. As the economy continues to limp along and our nation zeros in on bankruptcy, this spending debate is going to rage at all levels of government. Look at the recent fights in Washington –the debt ceiling and Obamacare – it’s all about spending. Look at old time Democrats like Senate Leader Harry Reid who want to continue business as usual – overspending. We can see how the 40 years of overspending is bringing our country down, conservative Republicans like Ted Cruz or Eric Cantor are trying to put some kind of limit on government spending. Whether it is Harry Reid or Ted Cruz of the US Senate, or the South Carolina general assembly it’s up to you to show the people where you stand on the issue of spending, because it is going to keep coming up everywhere you turn. Do you support continuing the wide-open spending of the last 40 years that has gotten us in this financial mess? Or do you support a change, like- living within our means? Narrowing that down to the here and now, are you going to add another seat on the school board and go with the over-spending?...those that indebted our county in the amount of $350 million dollars and a 40 mill tax increase? On behalf of the Republican party of Pickens County, I ask you to please support the board the way it is structured now, and support responsible and reasonable spending. Thank you.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 12:33:53 +0000
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