To the Middletown Residents:
I listened to the recent Concerned Neighbors Group (Audrey Macleod-Pfeiffer and Terri Flynn interview) on the local Bruce Newbury “Talk of the Town” radio show about the Middletown School Bond issue. I was impressed by the volume of misinformation, inaccurate information and outright disregard for the facts that were able to be communicated by the group’s representatives in such a short time.
This Concerned Neighbors Group doesn’t care about our children, their education, or our community; paying as little in taxes as possible is all they appear to care about. It is sad and disgusting. If this bond doesn’t pass because of the lies and misinformation spread by the Concerned Neighbor’s Group, what they will have accomplished is costing everyone in this community more money in taxes because we only have one choice and that is to fix our schools; they are past their useful life and have been in need of major repairs for years; the band aid fixes will no longer work.
We can build new schools now with a 55% reimbursement from the State or later with a 35% reimbursement from the State or we can begin the renovation option with no State reimbursement. The cost to renovate will nearly equal the bond issue that is on the ballot. The renovation option will put good money into old schools without extending the useful life of most of the buildings in any significant manner.
What is most amazing is that I rarely see any of the Concerned Citizens Group members at the School Committee meetings or any of the 90 plus School Building Committee meetings. Being involved is more than sitting behind a computer and spitting out false information and creating a campaign based on lies to misinform your neighbors just because you don’t like paying taxes or supporting public education. Involvement means creating solutions that are community focused and doing what is best for the community. This Concerned Neighbors Group has no solutions and is absent when the hard work of creating community-based solutions are being developed. They don’t know enough to be embarrassed by their activities but trust me, it has not gone unnoticed by many of the upstanding, hardworking, and honest citizens in our community.
Gregory Huet
CAPT, USN (Ret.)
Middletown
