Online petition started by "Lake County Safe Schools Initiative" activists to change School District elections to single district and not county wide elections

The Lake County Board is paying over $900,000 to have a single issue
November ballot in Lake County to get voter approval for renewing the penny
sales tax for another 15 years.

Because of that, a local group of angry School activists, the Lake County
Safe Schools Initiative, (click here for their Facebook page
) has created an online
petition HERE to get the School District
Board to change School Board Member elections from County wide to single
district elections. You can read the resolution, why the website creators
want change, and go to a page to sign the online petition. As of tonight,
only five people have signed it. Most publicity is on the above website or
by email. I was cut off from the Initiative website after trying to correct
facts posted there by unnamed administrators.

The purported purpose is to make it easier and less costly to run.

But you have to wonder what is the REAL reason for doing this.

It seems that changing to district only school board elections would result
in inter-district warfare, with each district focused on their own
priorities and not overall County priorities. It also makes it easier for
special interests to take over a single district election to achieve
objectives that may have nothing to do with student welfare. One result
could be a south county Board member would demand new schools or buses or
sidewalks without caring if other districts got funds. The process of
splitting capital funding from sales taxes among the districts would be more
directed at buying votes than if all Board members are involved in a
decision (well, at least three of them).

The people and funding behind this are not disclosed, which always bothered
me about the Safe School Initiative group - they have a habit of making name
calling attacks on anyone who doesn't conform with their interests.

If the School Board refuses to initiate changes to the election process
based on the online petition, then the group plans to gather official
petitions to add to the November ballot by a Supervisor of Elections
deadline since the County is already paying for the election.

So, follow this interesting development in School Board politics at the
above Facebook page or the petition website, run by secret people.

Vance Jochim
FiscalRangers.com