August 9, 2015

Scott Taylor

The Sun Sentinel

RE: School bonds – A question or two about your story in today’s unlinkable Sun Sentinel about moneys unspent by the Broward County Board of Education.

Mr. Taylor,

3 points:

#1 – Has the entire $800,000,000 been raised? At 5% a year for 340 years the amount that should have been voted on is $2,000,000,000, not $800,000,000. To the original amount $1,200,000,000 in interest must be added. Think of it as a 30 year mortgage. The Federal Truth in Lending Law requires that the total amount of the loan must be disclosed to the borrower. Why wasn’t it?

#2 – You write that “$152,000 worth of computers and networks” has been received by the Hawkes Bluff School in Davie. Try to remember 1985. Glasnost. Star Wars, “less filling, more taste”, the Chicago Bears, VCRs. Imagine buying an IBM  PC Peanut, a Wang, or a Cryden. Maybe you got a Mac or an Atari. They all used floppy discs to save things. You got a good VCR. You got an upscale Polaroid camera. MRIs still weren’t covered by insurance. Cell phones cost $2,500 to buy and a gazillion a month to use them. Senator Alpha Gump had not yet invented the internet. You drove your Oldsmobile to Disney World. Your sister and her family flew down from NYC on Eastern Airlines. You put the bill on your Visa card. In less than 2 years the devices were obsolete. Not structurally, but in speed, memory, and performance. And you finally finished paying for them. Last month, to be precise. 

Slick trade.

“Experience is the only school where some people learn” is a truism still not believed. 

#3 – Why was the perfectly functional Fort Lauderdale High School torn up as if it had wondered into a Planned Parenthood clinic? Why was the old pool torn out and a new one put in? Was it leaking? Or did the prospect of spending other peoples’ money just overwhelm them? 

Is this the beginning of the Summer of Recovery or is it the end?

Kevin Smith