Vote No on Measure H

school districts. So you have basically a district State Center Community College District that oversees many of the community colleges in the quote center of the state, hence the name State Center so Fresno City, Ridley College, Madera College, Closed Community, et cetera. Nonetheless, what we've got right now is every local school district in Fresno, the community college district, plus all the K through twelve school districts have bond measures

that are on the ballot for this November. People have gotten their vote by mail ballots or their drop off ballots already. Okay, those went out on Monday, so people are already starting to vote. Measure H is the largest of the K through twelve bond measures. This is for Fresno Unified. It's a five hundred million dollar bond measured to fund we are now belatedly learning a certain series of projects for construction throughout Presnoe Unified School District. What

is weird? Now? I've gone on and on and on on this show about how much I oppose these bond measures. The only reason all of these school districts are seeking this bond money is because the money is on the table right now. There's a statewide bond measure, a ten billion dollars statewide bond measure Proposition two. And basically, if local school districts pass bond measures of their own, they

can get matching funds from the state. So I don't think any of these bond measures are coming about from close Unified, President Unified, et cetera. I don't think any of them are coming out due to some exigent, urgent, genuine need. They just had bond measures that they passed four years ago in twenty twenty. I don't think it's

in response to any genuine need. These bond measures are coming about because the school districts see that they're money on the table to be gotten, and so they're aggressively pushing for the voters to pass bond measures. Because voters like voting for school bond measures. They always do. The school bond measures always pass, and I think it's because fundamentally people don't understand bond measures. They don't understand that a bond is a loan to a municipal entity, a

loan that you have to repay with interest. That's just what they are. In the case of Fresne Unified, this is a five hundred million dollar loan that's going to have to be paid back over I think it's thirty years, it might be forty years, thirty or forty years with interest. The amount that taxpayers within Fresnew Unified are actually going to have to pay is going to wind up being more than five hundred million, much more with interest payments.

It's going to wind up being closer to the ball of a billion dollars a billion dollars in taxes to get five hundred million dollars of benefit. Now there's this bizarre, this bizarre thing that I am noticing from AFAR. You've got Susan Wittrup on the board of trustees for Fresnan Unified School district. She is the representative for the Bullard High School region, and I guess Fresne Unified's board of trustees they are elected kind of on a regional basis.

So you're the representative for Bullard High School, you're the representative for this. Clovis Unified is switching to a similar model, and you'll you'll be able to see why. I don't know that that's a great idea in just a second. Susan Wittrup, though, is also in a relationship with Darius Assimi, who's a very wealthy guy owns Granville Holmes and also owns GV Wire, which is a now becoming more and

more prominent news outlet throughout the San Joaquin Valley. I think, frankly it's becoming I think it's almost as important at this point. It's almost as important as the Presno B is. By this point, I think the Fresno Be's influence is waning and waning as actual readership of the physical newspaper

of the Fresno B is going down and down. So Darias Sassimi comes out in opposition to measure h on GV wire, and then they publish in gv wire as a news story twenty four questions from Susan Wittrop and answers from district's staff on the Fresney Unified website. Wittrop

herself is apparently urging a no vote. So this is this bizarre thing of Witchrop being on the board, but her, this person she's in a relationship with, runs this major media outlet that's covering this whole thing, and she's raised a bunch of questions and I think merit some real answers.

I think apparently what appears to be happening is that with Measure H, all of a sudden, just this week, we're starting to get a finalized list of construction projects, projects towards which the five hundred million dollars in Measure H funding will be directed. And the purported rationale I talked about it a little bit earlier this week on the show. The purported rationale is to look at it on an equity basis. That has to be the liberal

buzzwords speak. But I think what they mean is, Okay, well, we're going to allocate more money for poorer districts. So as a result, Bullard High School and its sort of region is not getting much of the funding. They're getting a small amount of the funding. A huge amount of the five hundred million. I think about one hundred million is going to go to Roosevelt. I think McLain is the other one that's going to get around one hundred million.

So Fresno High is going to get a lot. So these poorer parts of the district are going to get a lot of money. There's going to be a whole rebuild of an elementary school in Calawa. Now Wittrup has raised these questions, the first and foremost being why is the project list coming before the board of directors a President Unified for a approval after the ballots already got

to voters. I mean that just seems completely unacceptable. Voters already got their ballots and the project list wasn't even finalized. The next question she raises, why is the bond measure coming to voters before a permanent superintendent is hired? This is another question from Wittrop. Now we know why it's coming before the voters before a permanent superintendent is hired.

For President Unified. So, for those who haven't followed, Bob Nelson was the superintendent of President Unified he retired, rode off into the sunset to some nice, cushy sinecure position over at Fresno State. There was this big push to hire Misty her as his replacement. Then there was pushback on that with the idea of, hey, mister Hurd just happens to be the assistant superintendent. There's no one else in the country would be better suited as superintendent. Shouldn't

we have a larger search. There's all this soul searching from the board and self flagellation and oh, we're going to go through a board retreat and we're going to figure out what we have to do as a board, which was sort of I would imagine for voters within President Unified, you'd think, why do you Why does the President Unified board need a consultant and a board retreat to figure out how to do their jobs? Didn't you're elected officials, You postured yourself as being ready to do

this job. Why do you need extra outside help? Why do you need an expensive consultant to help you with your job? So the reason why there isn't a permanent superintendent when Measure H coming out is because obviously Measure H is out, because Proposition two is on the ballot.

That's the only reason we're doing Measure H right now. Yes, in a reasonable world, you would wait until there's a permanent superintendent before you go to the voters to ask them for one hundred five hundred million dollars bond measure for rebuilding all kinds of things, prioritizing different things within prisoning Unified, you would wait until you had a permanent superintendent whose vision for development of the district was clear and in place. But they don't have time to wait

for that. The money is on the table now. They want to grab the money. Now, that's the whole point of this bond measure is to grab the money. The money from Prop two proposition to the statewide bond measure, the statewide ten billion dollar bond measure. They can get that money if they raise local bond funding. So gonna wait around for a permanent superintendent, because that's that's the tail wagging the dog nature of all of these bond measures.

They're not coming about close. Unified doesn't need four hundred million new dollars all of a sudden, they want four hundred million dollars. They are always gonna say yes to new money, and they see, well, they're state funding on the table with Prop two. If assuming Prop two passes, that state money is going to be on the table, and we only get access to it if we raise or we get access to more of it if we raise our own bond funding. So here's Measure A for

Close Unified, Here's Measure H for President Unified. Here's you know, the equivalent measures for Central Unified and for Sendard Unified. And all these school districts are doing the same thing. For State Center, Community College District, They're all doing this, so of course it would make more sense to wait for permanent superintendent, but they don't feel like they have time to wait. This is the tail wagging the dog nature of all this. Wit Troup asked the question, and

clearly she's leading this way. Does asking for this Measure H bond funding create a public perception that the interim superintendent may be allocating bond funds into certain trustee regions to secure the permanent superintendent position by catering to a simple majority of the board. So Wittroup is making the argument here that the allocation of these Measure H funds it goes district. It basically goes on a high school

by high school regional basis. Within president Unified, the Bullard High School and its region get this much, Sunnyside High School and its region get that much. Mclayane High School, Roosevelt High School, Fresno High School and its regions get this much, this much, and this much, and what Wittrop And by the way, all of the individual Board of Trustee members of Fresne Unified are elected on that regional basis.

Wittrop is the representative for Bullard High, this person's the representative for Fresno High, this person's representative for Sunnyside High, et cetera. And what wit Trop is thinking is, hey, like you're giving a ton of money to certain districts. Are you just trying to curry favor with those trustees? Is that what Misty Hurt, who has clearly wanted the superintendent job, is she trying to curry favor with those

individual trustee members. This is why, by the way, I am not crazy about the fact that Clovis Unified is changing to a regionally based Board of time trustees system, because this is what happened. Liberals want that for Clovis Unified because they think it will allow more liberals to be elected to the Close Unified school Board. What's really going to happen is this kind of territorial turf war

nonsense is going to start happening right now. All of the trustees for Clovis High are charged with caring for all of the schools within Clovis Unified. But if it turns into regional stuff, which is what's going to happen for Clos Unified, well, you're the Clovis East regional representative. You don't care about the Clovis West. You don't have the same inherent need to care about what is good

for Clovis West. In fact, if it's a question of allocating scarce resources, you're going to fight like hell for Clovis East to the detriment of Clovis West. You don't care what the Clovis West voters think. You're only you know, you're answerable to the voters in the Closed East region.

That's how President Unified is set up, and it leads to these kinds of silly turf war tensions and possibly, as wit Trip's pointing out, attempts to curry favor one way or another with attempts to curry favor with one school board member over another to secure a job. Why wasn't a community bond committee formed to provide input for the project list? The answer to that was, ah, we polled the public. We had board workshops back in May of twenty twenty three, and then April twenty twenty four,

and at the June board meeting. What was the interim superintendent's process for prioritizing projects, What was the interim superintendent's process for revisiting the project list? How many revisions have been made? So there are a lot of these questions that I think remain unanswered with measure H. But again, just the John Girardi basic principle, don't vote for bond measures, just don't do it. More on this when we returned

this is the John Girardi Show on Power Talk. I want to read some of this piece in GV wire, this opinion piece written by Susan Wittrup, who is the president of the president Unified Board of Trustees and now the President of the Board of Trustees. I think it's more just kind of like a primus enterpars so first among equals. It's not like she's got more power necessarily than the other members of the Board of Trustees. I

think she just kind of runs the meetings. She represents the Bullard region, and she has a piece that was published in GV Wire urging people to vote no on Measure H and it highlights a lot of things that are a little bit more specific than my opposition. I mean, my opposition has been mainly, Look, bond measures are just bad ideas. It's a bad way of funding public projects. It's you know, it's whatever is the opposite of delayed gratification,

instant gratification. The school district gets five hundred million dollars and taxpayers have to pay basically a billion dollars for that five hundred million dollars worth of benefit over the course of in this case, forty years. Okay, it's a forty year loan. That's what it is. It's not I think people have this sort of pie in the sky idea in their heads. I actually think most voters just don't know what a bond is. I think they hear bond,

they hear money for schools. They hear sort of positive sounding things promoted by the school district, read by construction companies that want the contracts who promote these kinds of bond measures, they hear the positive things.

taxing you. In the case of school districts, they get that tax money from property taxes. And if you think, well, I'm a renter, so I'm not paying property tax, yes you are. Why do you think your rent keeps going up? You know your landlord is accounting for what he has to pay in property taxes. That is baked into what you pay in rent. And I think that's part of why these bond measures pass is because one it's a small increase in percentage, it's sort of buried in your

property tax statement. You're not looking at it all the time the way that you're looking at you know, honestly, if if Chevron and gas companies like that really wanted to stick it to California, you know what they could do to basically overthrow California stick government immediately. Instead of just the normal dollar, you know how on any gas pump, you've got the amount of gallons of gas and the

amount of dollars. If they set up a third little window showing the amount of gallons, the costs of the gallons, and then the amount of taxes. If they did that and people could see in real time on the screen how much they were paying just in California state gasoline taxes, there'd be a third American. There'd be a second American revolution, or at least a California revolution, let's put it that way.

People don't see their property taxes day in and day out like that the way they do with you know, just at least you know, seeing gas at the pump. That's why people get more angry over gas prices rising than they do over various other kinds of things rising. I'm convinced it's because you see that, you see the dollars going way faster than the number of gallons, and it's the psychological thing that drives people nuts. People used to be that way with ATM fees all the time

because you'd see it right there on the screen. But people don't really see that with these property tess especially if you don't pay, especially if you rent and you're not seeing property tax kind of built into your rent payments. So, especially in a school district like Presney Unified that has a lot of voters who are lower income, who don't own their homes, I think it's a very easy sort of cell. It's very easy pitch.

So that'll be next on the John Girardi Show. This is the piece in GV Wire written by Susan Wittrup, who's the head of the board of trustees for Fresney Unified, in which she's telling people to vote no on Measure H, which is the five hundred million dollar Presdney Unified School bond. And I thought it was kind of fascinating that a school board member would actually urge a no vote on a bond. It's a rare thing and frankly something I

actually admire that Susan Witchrup's done. I'll confess I haven't at various times been very enthusiastic about her, but I'm pretty impressed by this. So let me go through this as a school board trustee, She writes, I don't make the recommendation no lightly because I recognize that our schools in Fresney Unified are aging and dilapidated, and we will need a bond measure passed in the near future. However, the process to put Measure H on the ballot you

received this week was sloppy and deeply flawed. Measure H simply is not ready your ballot, states quote. The school board has identified detailed facilities needs of the district and has determined which projects to finance from a local bond. The most recent revision of the still unapproved construction project list came out on Friday, so a week ago. Today.

The board will vote to approve the project list with no public discussion on Wednesday, two days after residents began voting on Measure H. Since the item is on the consent agenda, there was no community bond committee formed to provide input and o resite to the development of the project list, so the voters got it before there was actually a detailed list of construction projects actually approved. She continues with the section called hastily thrown together raises taxes

for forty years. President Unified could take lessons from neighboring school districts. I've been talking with their trustees about how their districts prepared for bonds. Both Clovis Unified and Central Unified have bond measures on the ballot. In Clovis Unified, the project list was developed by district staff and a community bond committee based on priorities set by the board

well in advance, without any involvement from board members. That's the way it's supposed to be to safeguard the project list from becoming politicized. In Fresnow Unified board members met directly with facilities staff multiple times and dictated where bond funds should be allocated for projects. Woh, that's a juicy bit of info. So okay, So what she's saying is when Clothes Unified developed its list of things, staff put together the proposed list, then it was presented to the

Board of Trustees. Then the Board of Trustees voted on the project list. What Wittrip is saying is that, no, apparently they met with some board members. Some board members were dictating what kinds of projects they wanted, So they were manipulating the process on the front end with staff and then presenting that to the board. And that's more egregious I think within Presne Unified, because Fresney Unified trustees

are elected on a regional basis. So I'm from the Bullard High Region, I'm from the Sunnyside region, I'm from the Fresnoe High Region, I'm from the McLean region. I'm from the Roosevelt region. You had what wid Trip seems to be saying here is that people were trying to, you know, hog more funding for their region over and against some other region. She continues, there have been at least three revisions to the project list since the item was pulled by staff from the agenda at the last

board meeting. The only public discussion for the original project list occurred at a board meeting in August. Where is the list of projects by schools that voters need to see before they vote? In Close Unified, every school in the district placed signs with a QR code before voters received ballots so that the public can easily access information

about improvements planned for the schools in their neighborhoods. For both Cloes Unified and Central Unified, timing for the bond was intentional, so there will be no tax rate change. Their bonds pick up where previous bonds drop off, so the cost is neutral to taxpayers. I hate that argument. By the way, I'm not to interject myself into wip's piece here again, this is Susan Wichrop's piece, the president

of President Unified Board of Trustees. Just to interject here, I hate that Close Unified does this actually, because what Close Unified does with their bond measure is say.

This word gain Close Unified does is doing with Measure A that that annoys me, and they've done it with prior bond measures as well. If it passes, which continues, Measure H will result in a sharp increase to the tax rate over the next forty years. While Fresno families are still struggling to recover from their summer PG and E bills, their property taxes will increase to the highest

tax rate Fresno taxpayers have ever seen. She then talks about her opinion that they should have a permanent superintendent first before voting on such a massive bond measure. Hire a permanent superintendent first, which are brights? I met and spoke with several voters of the last few weeks to solicit input and submitted twenty four unanswered questions to interim Superintendent Misty Her about the district's process for prioritizing projects

and allocating bond funds. My questions and responses from the district staff should be posted for the public at the President Unified website before Wednesday's board meeting. Moreover, in the big scheme of priorities for this school district, measure h is out of order. Conducting a national search and hiring

a permanent superintendent must come first. Until the President Unified School Board can actively demonstrate a focus on student outcomes and hire a permanent superintendent, a bond measure should be out of the question. Several months ago, I called out another flawed process when a narrow majority of the boards sought to limit the superintendent search to internal candidates. The community weighed in and pressured the school board to conduct

an external search for the best, most qualified leader. Your voice made a difference and changed the trajectory. Use your voice now to reinforce it. In fact, a no vote on Measure H may help accelerate the school board governance training that's in progress by communicating the expectations and values of the community. In other words, you can't expect Presney Unified trustees to make the changes that are obviously needed by continuing to reward poor decisions as the ultimate stewards

of taxpayer money. The board shouldn't be focused on the educational should be focused on the educational outcomes of our students while creating policies in a culture that demands operational excellence at the district. A plan I support and voters should insist upon is for the board to conduct a national search and hire a permanent superintendent. The district needs to show evidence that student outcomes are improving and that

a basic level of operational competence has been restored. This way, taxpayers know exactly how their hard earned tax dollars will be spent over the next forty years. All of this must be completed well before ballots arrive in homes. Only then can the public feel confident that President Unified can be trusted to deliver what is promised both with their

children and their tax dollars. Again, that's the piece by Susan Wittrop those published in GV Wire urging a no vote on Measure H. She's right, but I think again one of the things she's not mentioning is she's saying, well, why are we having a vote on this before a permanent superintendent is hired? And this is the reason why is part of the ridiculous tail wagging the dog nature of all of these bond measures that are before all

of the voters throughout the San Joaquin Valley. The reason they're having a vote on it now is because the money's on the table from the state now. It's being put before the voters now. This bond measure is put before the voters right now because Proposition two is on the table. Proposition two is the statewide bond measure, the state wide ten billion dollar bond measure for K through twelve school districts as well as for community college districts.

K through twelve school districts can get more of that money if they raise matching funds locally through local bond measures. That's why Measure H is on the ballot right now. It's not rocket science. That's why it's because of the screwed up nature of how public school districts do their funding. This is what happened last time. In twenty twenty, there was a statewide bond measure for public schools funding, and

so all local school districts had to bond up. And this just reflexively happens every time there's a state bond measure. The local school they the way they structure it because this is how the California Teachers Association runs this state. Okay, if they don't feel like they got enough money, if the California Teachers Association, the teachers' unions that run Sacramento, and yes they run Sacramento. Public employees unions are the most powerful force in Sacramento. And the biggest of those

public employees unions is the teachers. They run sec cremental. They are the single most powerful public the single most powerful special interest lobbying entity, political donor, influence makers, power brokers, whatever you want to call it. In Sacramento. You look at the donors who gave to Gavin Newsom, no single group, certainly during his recall when there were a lot of like there was a lot of loose limitations on well, so there are certain dollar limitations on what you can

just give to Gavin Newsom for governor. But a lot of those dollar limitations didn't exist during the recall because you weren't technically voting for Gavin Newsom. You were you were campaigning on No on the recall measure. So the people who gave gazillions of dollars to the No on the recall Gavin Neussom measure, like the teachers unions were

the single biggest group and it wasn't even close. And you could see right there just based on the dollar amounts and just adding them up like, okay, yeah, the teachers unions, they've got the most clout. The teachers' unions basically were mad that Gavin Newsom didn't allocate enough money for public schools in this last year's budget. Gavin Newsom

is caught between a rock and a hard place. Teachers unions want ever more and more and more and more money for public schools, much of it going into their pockets. But Gavin Newsom, that's the rock and the hard place is math. We don't have much money. California has been facing budget deficits the last two years. Why because revenues from taxpayers are not matching the costs that we have to spend money on, or that Democrats have basically gotten

the state used to spending. We had this bumper year in twenty twenty two when we had this big influx of federal COVID money. We had a budget surplus, and everyone thought happened Days in Sunshine were here to stay. Well, they weren't. The economy wasn't great. A bunch of people who make a lot of money in capital gains and a lot of high income earners left California between twenty twenty and today, and tax revenues are outpacing spending burdens.

So the teachers unions didn't get enough money for schools. And the way that Newsom sort of wiggled himself out of it to placate the teachers unions was by pledging, all right, I'll support a statewide ballot initiative for a statewide bond measure, and then all the local school districts they can do their own, you know, bond measure funding. That's the only reason why Measure H is on the

ballot right now. It's on the ballot right now for reasons that have nothing to do with anything reasonable for Presne Unified, WI. Trop's totally correct. Yes, it's unreasonable to have a five hundred million dollar bond measure for a school district that hasn't even hired its permanent superintendent, where maybe you have a superintendent who has a different vision for ways in which the district should go that would impact the allocation of funding for all this different construction projects.

But no, we're going to let the interim superintendent who interim that means for the meanwhile, the interim superintendent is going to guide the process for these five hundred million dollars worth of construction that's going to impact the school district for years, for forty years to come, at least, as taxpayers have to pay this off for forty years, increasing property taxes in the Presdent Unified region for forty years. So of course she's right that it doesn't make sense

to do this now. But the reason why it doesn't make sense to do it now is it's the same reason why none of this makes sense for any of the school districts in not just President Unified, but Closes Unified, all the school districts that are doing bond measures right now. It's not in response to any exgent need necessarily that the school district has. It's only in response to their state money on the table because Gavin Newsom, because the

teachers' union's got angry at Gavin Newsom. That's the only reason we're doing these this bond measure right now. That's why we're doing another bond measure four years after we just did one to close out the show. Just a reminder that maybe there could be a different paradigm for all of this with public schools. That's next on the

John Girardi Show. With all this brew haha over measure h and you know Susan Wittrap, the head of the board of trustees for President Unified, actually urging people to vote no on measure age. It just makes me think, you know, parents, does it have to be this way?

Do you need to send your kid to a public school that not only is it questionable how it's being led, how funding is going, how it's being spent, but just a school district that in general, and any of you listening to this who are maybe Christian or have a more conservative leaning worldview, a school district where the curriculum is set up to actively oppose you a curriculum that actively hates you and your beliefs and what you believe in and what you stand for, and is communicating a

different moral vision from yours. Homeschooling's out there, man, and let me tell you it is producing better results than President Unified. Is two thirds of these kids in President Unified can't read or do math at grade level. So the idea of giving five hundred million dollars for this enormous, badly run venture that can't even educate kids, that is failing to educate kids at a staggering level, it's beyond

me why anyone would vote for that. So anyway, vote no on all these school bond measures, any bond measure, Just no, Just say no. That'll do it. John Dierready show see you next time on Power Talk