Well, the school district's ambitious bond proposal went down in flames at the polls (so to speak, the county votes by mail) last night (also so to speak, many of the ballots were mailed in early).
I'm reminded of the Nashua School District's successful bid to build a new high school and renovate the older one a few years ago. The project, enormous by local standards (in the $100 million to $200 million range, as I recall), was approved with little apparent difficulty. In the Nashua area - long a hotbed of stinginess - the win was something of a surprise for casual observers.
But not-so-casual observers knew school bond boosters (officials and residents alike) had spent many months in a work-intensive and drawn-out process of research and consensus building with the general public for the win. The key element appeared to be that officialdom asked voters for their input and showed they had listened when the proposal finally made it to the polls.
The hard work paid off, big time.
Tuesday's rebuke here was to the tune of 60-40, far sharper than down the road in Frogland, where another school bond proposal failed (53-47 or somesuch, but apparently with too few votes to count anyway). As a colleague said, the voters' answer up here was "hell no."
Food for thought, I hope.
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