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01/19/2022 07:00 AM

No Longer Time to Waste


Madison has an opportunity on Tuesday, Feb. 15 to make a critical investment in our schools. This referendum reflects hundreds of hours of debate, discussion, and refinement. More than 60 options were discussed by the bipartisan TriBoard working group before this solution achieved unanimous support. This plan is a thoughtful compromise and gives our community a chance to make a giant step forward.

Madison has long been an education destination for families because of the strength of our schools. After 15 years of deferred maintenance costs, our facilities don’t match the strength of our curriculum and teachers. Likewise, our school budgets increasingly reflect an unreasonable burden of fixed costs due to maintenance directly impacting the ability to fund programming. This referendum offers a chance to stop the bleeding and improve our town schools to reflect 21st-century academic and security standards.

By reducing our school foot print to four facilities at a cost below our projected 10-year maintenance estimates, this is also a fiscally responsible choice. With our current tax base, we cannot take investment spending lightly. We need to have a demonstrable return on investment. Maintaining our schools excellence will continue to draw new families to town. In a town where 95 percent of our tax revenue is from individual property owners, a failure to focus on this demographic would be an enormous economic mistake.

As a participant in years of budgetary discussions I am well aware that the size of this expenditure is an open invitation for folk to be negatively reticent and pursue a tack of “what aboutism.” There is no longer any time to waste. I encourage your readers to vote to pass the school facilities referendum. It’s time that Madison invests in progress!

Katie Stein

Madison

Democrat Katie Stein serves on the Board of Finance.