I encourage you all to vote “yes” for the school bond.

I believe that the requested $27 million is a very large amount of money to pay for a school which serves fewer than 500 pupils annually. But I also believe that the school board, the school administration, and the architects and contractors involved will all do their very best to hold costs down, and to spend only as much of the bond money as is absolutely necessary.

To underline this intention, the school board has bound themselves, once the job is complete, to use any remaining money to pay down the district’s bond indebtedness, instead of dumping the windfall into the district’s general account. If things work out as well as I believe they could, this would save us taxpayers quite a lot of cash.

I switched my position from opposing the bond to supporting it because the school board and the administration worked very hard to remove from their wish list all of the items which did not directly affect the educational process. Now, although school repair and reconstruction will not strictly be a bare-bones job, it will be cut pretty darn close to those bones indeed.

Therefore, I request two things from you: first that you vote “yes,” to help the bond issue pass; and, second, that you join me in keeping a very close watch on project expenditures.

Steve Henigson

Eastsound