Public Schools: Trustee of Public Funds

In a couple of years, they'll be back, asking for another two mills:

"In addition to buying big-screen plasma TVs for the Muskego High School cafeteria, school district officials disclosed Tuesday that they spent $191,250 on aesthetically-pleasing brick and hallway doors with some of the money left over from a taxpayer-approved renovation project." Link.

Someone could probably make a great blog site just posting instances of local public schools wasting millage moneys. In our district, we used a small portion of a millage, in conjunction with Michigan grant moneys, to provide Palm Pilots for all public school sixth graders (and, as far as public schools go, we think ours is well run).

By the way: there's no such thing as "left over money." Most of these projects are paid with bonds, which are issued by the schools and bought by financial institutions. The schools could decline to spend all the available funds, thus reducing the initial principal balance, or they could use the "left over money" to pre-pay the principal. Either way, the principal and accumulated interest over the course of the bonds would be decreased, with the result that the burden could be lifted off the taxpayers sooner. But now we're talking fantasy-land type stuff.