Letter from David Petri

My Vote on CCS Budget is a ‘No’

What’s your stand in regard to the Cooperstown school and responsibility?

We recently learned that the Cooperstown school district is proposing a 4.7 percent budget increase resulting in a 2.7 percent tax levy increase. This is like a runaway freight train when our enrollment has, over the years, greatly decreased.

On my farm is a one-room school built in 1804 to educate and make responsible citizens of children who would someday lead the future of our great country. Just a little over one score years before, our ancestors had put all they had on the line and had fought a great Revolutionary War against tyranny and high taxes. My grandfather, who went to this school through grade six, received a well-balanced, basic education where he could dance circles in math around most of our students of today. He learned to be a responsible young man who lived within his means and paid his bills.

Today in this country we have, for the most part, created a generation that lives on credit and is in debt with little thought of any responsibility for their actions. They don’t understand that sometimes when you live within your means there may be no money for steak so you may have to eat potatoes or rice. Some of our parents went through the Great Depression and World War II and understood well this concept.

Last fall, several of us were told by a reliable source that $3 million had been stolen from the Cooperstown school district. It later came out in a local paper that it was $500,000.00. The question now arises—who do we believe?

Since then, very little has been said and it has been swept under the carpet. The school administration and board said this would not affect the education of our students. At that time, I commented that of course it won’t, they will just raise the taxes to cover the loss. Was I right?

How do we teach our young people to be responsible citizens when our whole school administration and all members of the school board are so irresponsible and reckless in the way they handle money?

I will be voting “no” on the school budget on May l9. I would encourage you all to do the same.

David Petri
Hartwick