District needs to do a project at a time

I have lived in Marysville for more than 11 years and I understand the need for new and improved schools even though I do not have, nor have I ever had, a child in its school system. Over that 11 years I have seen hundreds (yes, hundreds) of homes built around my immediate area without one additional school built to handle all the children who live in these homes. Shouldn’t new schools have been built as the population increased to support the additional children?

Now the Marysville School Board realizes that several new schools need to be built and a few old ones need to be refurbished. Their way to “fix” this situation is to ask us citizens to pass a “monster” bond to cover everything. But I ask: Has the Marysville School Board ever considered that the reason its bond continues to fail is that we taxpayers are concerned about the huge increase in our taxes if the bond were to be approved as proposed? I estimate my taxes will have to increase by one-third or more, just to fund the school bond if it were to pass.

My suggestion would be to break the district’s needs down to more manageable tax increases, starting with the highest priority need first. Then in a year or so submit another bond for their next highest priority, etc. This would give us taxpayers an opportunity to adjust to smaller increases. There is an old saying that, I believe, kind of applies here: “An error on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part!”

Gene Kinnunen

Marysville