THROUGH MY EYES -- Ron Davis

It looks like it’s back to the drawing board for the Huntington Beach

Union High School District. As you know, the high school district

suffered a narrow defeat of its proposed school repair bond, Measure A,

which was designed to repair our local high schools.

What disturbs me about the vote isn’t only that it was narrowly defeated,

but that almost 82% of the registered voters in the district apparently

didn’t give a damn about either their schools or their taxes and avoided

the polls.

While I laud those of you who voted, even those of you who voted “no” on

the measure, I wonder what the district can do to accomplish the goal of

providing a quality education to our kids, which includes buildings in

reasonable repair.

I, like so many of you, have heard the easy platitudes -- cut costs and

increase revenue. But platitudes, whether about school districts or

government, are merely hollow statements unless coupled with some

specific how-to suggestions calculated at accomplishing the goal.

I confess to not fully comprehending the position of those of you who

voted “no” on the issue. I suppose that some substantial portion of that

vote represented those who refuse to pay another dime in taxes, no matter

the purpose.

Perhaps some of the negative vote had its genesis in a fundamental

dissatisfaction with government in general, borne of the view that

government is wasteful, inefficient and unresponsive.

Frankly, I agree with that characterization of government. But it

represents mere conclusions and generalizations, which do little to solve

the problems of waste, inefficiency and unresponsiveness.

I doubt that any of us will ever see any form of government, including a

school district, that isn’t wasteful, inefficient and unresponsive to one

degree or another. That’s the nature of the beast.

Dogs bite, bark and growl because they’re dogs. Through various methods,

we can reduce their inclination to do so but never eliminate it. That’s

their nature.

So, too, with government. We can reduce the inefficiency, wastefulness

and unresponsiveness of government, but probably never eliminate it.

Those are inherent in government.

When I looked at the bond measure, I saw a school district in the throes

of self-examination. They looked at their history and that of their

predecessors. I’m sure they saw some inefficiencies and waste, and that’s

precisely what they attempted to address within the measure.

The district tried to build a better mousetrap by putting into place

certain mechanisms designed to ensure that any bond money would be

properly spent on school repair, as opposed to salaries for teachers or

administrators. They also imposed a reserve designed to ensure repair and

maintenance in the future.

In short, they offered us what they considered to be a better plan.

Did those mechanisms guarantee that the district wouldn’t buy the

occasional $700 hammer or $3,000 toilet? Absolutely not. But, the

mechanisms provided greater assurances that those circumstances were less

likely to occur.

Telling the school district that their plan was unacceptable without

reference to a better plan, a specific plan, by alluding to the empty

platitudes and cliches of “cutting costs” and “increasing revenue,”

benefited no one.

In my view, we told the district that their plan wasn’t good enough,

without offering a better plan in its place.

As individuals, whenever we try and do something better -- improve

ourselves or our condition or build the better mousetrap -- the last

thing we need to hear is “That’ll never work,” without a suggestion about

what will work.

That’s all I propose. Criticize the school district’s plan by holding up

your better plan to the same kind of scrutiny. If you have a better plan,

not burdened with tired cliches, platitudes and adages but built on a

bedrock of specific how-to suggestions, show the community, and we’ll

beat a path to your door.

Real plans can never be measured against ideal, fictional or fanciful

ones, only against what is. The question being not whether the plan is

perfect, but merely whether it is better than any other specific plan.

By this standard, I think we failed our children.

* Ron Davis is a private attorney who lives in Huntington Beach. He can

be reached by e-mail at [email protected].