We took back our School Board tonight (Wauwatosa)

[RetroLounge]

Kicked the incumbant arrogant school board president to the curb.

They closed one of our neighborhood schools against the wishes of just about everyone. And now they got their asses handed to them...

All politics is local!

RL

[chlamor]

1. Awesome

Tell more

[RetroLounge]

6. Well, 700+ people turned out for the board meeting

to tell them to keep the school open. 699 to 1 was the ratio of the comments, the one "close" the school person being a backer of Tim Taff, who is now gone. This Taff guy was an arrogant, rude prick who regularly insulted the public, rolled his eyes during meetings, and ignored opposition.

There was no hurry to close the school. The minority opinion on the board was to wait until we had a new superintendent, and after the elections, but they couldn't wait.

So now his arrrogant ass is gone.

RL

[efhmc]

2. I love to hear about the people getting to pick.

[CoffeeCat]

3. Good for you!!

Excellent work!

People who make a difference on local issues are some of the most courageous people.

Most often, everyone knows everyone--and it can be hard to stand up to "the powers that be."

I commend you and your community for kicking Mr/Ms president to the curb.

Bravo!!!

[Cha]

4. Congrats, Retro!

Feeling GOOD?!:yourock: :applause:

[RetroLounge]

5. Feels Great!

The new board member who beat the incumbant board president is my neighbor. Nice guy.

RL

[ClassWarrior]

7. Awesome RL!!

:hi:

I know many people who were involved in that fight.

Any word on how the library hearing went?

NGU.

[RetroLounge]

10. Haven't heard about the Library thing yet.

:hi:

RL

[phaseolus]

8. Glad to hear it...

In other news, my neighbors in Brown Deer have doomed my kids to dealing with crumbling school buildings for the foreseeable future. But on the bright side, Burmaster won! I strongly suspect Underheim would have been horrible news for public schools...

[ClassWarrior]

9. I hear that some folks in Brown Deer are trying to cut off your library...

...from the Federated System too. True?

NGU.

[shoelace414]

11. the federated system is under "attack"

from multiple cities. they don't like paying book borrowing fees. (read it in the Journal-Sentinel a few days ago)

[phaseolus]

12. it's a business decision

...and comes from the libraries themselves. It's an issue that comes up every decade or so and finally is coming to a head. Libraries reimburse each other for books borrowed by 'foreigners', and City of Milwaukee's payments aren't covering true costs...

I'll be pissed if/when it happens because me & my family are very heavy users of other libraries besides my own...

[shoelace414]

13. I don't fully understand the beef suburbs have

my rudementary feeling is there are always winners and losers when sharing dollars back and forth.

kind of like MMSD.. the high property values citys want it based on use, and Milwaukee wants it based on property values.

[phaseolus]

18. self-delete

(replied to the wrong message, oops)

[ClassWarrior]

14. From what I understand, those book fees are piddling...

...compared to what these libraries are saving by not duplicating services.

What it's REALLY about is that the Radical RWers in these suburbs don't want "dark-skinned riff-raff" in THEIR libraries. Scumbags.

NGU.

[phaseolus]

19. the racism thing is definitely not the case in Brown Deer

...which is probably one of the most racially integrated places in Milwaukee County, and whose library employs African-Americans.

...including one amazingly hot librarian :loveya:

And although I haven't lived in Tosa since the mid-80s, my impression is that it isn't the lily-white place it was in the 60s.

[dragonlady]

21. We worked really hard on passing it, though

Hi, Phaseolus! I didn't know there was another Brown Deer DUer.

I was part of the Better Brown Deer group that did so much toward trying to pass the school referendum. It was a real inspiration to see how people concerned about the schools came together as a community. There will most likely be another try at improving the school buildings. PM me if you want to discuss what will happen next.

We learned a lot from this campaign. First, we needed more time to plan it better. (The school board didn't get the referendum questions worked out until the very deadline. That didn't give us much time to work out our messages.) Second, we needed more people who could do a little or a lot of work. We weren't able to contact every voter, and I think if we could have actually talked to each one we might have made enough converts to change the outcome. There were 7,000 voters in November, but only about 3,500 voted this week. Next time we need to find some of the other half and get them convinced to vote for the schools.

On the bright side, the losing school board candidate would have been a real disaster. We can be grateful that an excellent long-time supporter of the schools stepped up to run so the election wouldn't be unopposed. However, we need to be on guard in case the loser (in every sense of the word) doesn't get traction to run again.

[eyesroll]

15. Congratulations, RL!

It sounds like a lot of races statewide went the right way.

:bounce:

[RetroLounge]

17. Sounds that way!

Gotta keep this state Blue, after all!

RL

[Dinger]

16. Cool - I'm A Toas East Grad (1978) Good To Hear! (nt)

[gizmo1979]

20. Yeah we win we win!!

It's been along time since we could say that.