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Battleground Brown
Deer
School Referendum, School Board Race divides community
by Jim McGuigan
April 4, 2005
It's a quiet little community. No sidewalks. Few street lights. Big explosions - political explosions that is.
Students are dealing with crumbling infrastructure in their high school, science labs that aren't much good for science, an auditorium that is too small and inadequate for performances, a wall near a pool ready to collapse and a powerful senior citizens club with a history of opposing government spending.
Some citizens want to take the village back from those seeking to defund Village services and schools, and they're not being quiet about it.
Over the past few weeks, over a hundred "YES" signs have sprung up like tulip leaves in the yards of residents, followed by a handful of "NO" signs.
The "YES" signs refer to four referendum questions on the ballot. Should voters give the school referendum the nod, new schools will replace the ailing ones. If they give children the "NO" vote, the school district will have to continue to patch up cracking masonry, pump out flood prone basements, and patch leak prone roofs.
But it's not that simple. There are two open seats on the School Board and there are three candidates. Candidate Dennis Griffin supports the referendum. Candidate Mark Levine, the only incumbent running, wants to leave it up to the voters to decide. Candidate Bruce Thomas is adamant in his zeal to oppose the referendum. Thomas' criminal past has played a role in the campaign, but many who oppose the referendum are willing to overlook his past because they feel that Thomas has been so vocal in his opposition to the referendum that he would support their values.
Politics in Brown Deer has a tendency to be caustic, and leaders in the community are tied at the waist with the Republican shill group, Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG). That should surprise no one because the longtime President of the senior citizen club, Joe Klucarich, as well as the vice president, Don Uebelacker, were founders of CRG.
 In a recent editorial to the Northshore Herald, former School Board member and member of the senior citizens club, Kay Drews, spoke out. Drews strongly opposed the referendum and pointed out that seniors are on a fixed income and that young people can't always get everything they want. Her letter was surprising in its candor. Drews stopped short of saying that children, and parents with school age children, were selfish, but her indictment was clear.
Several years ago when I was an invited guest at a senior club meeting (prior to CRG infecting the club) one member remarked that taxes should be raised on all "those" college students. They were the ones that had the money, he said, and they shouldn't be driving around in their fancy cars while seniors struggle on a fixed income. At the time I had been out of college less than 10 years and I remembered sharing a cramped attic apartment with my wife while we were in college. We ate a lot of rice and potatoes in those days. Green beans and cheese were welcome additions to our otherwise blasé diet. We struggled to get by and we were proud of our diplomas when we graduated.
The politics of division between young families and seniors has always befuddled me. I've never understood why some seniors often look at young people as a detriment to their pocketbook rather than as the people that are paying for their social security and
subsidizing their Medicare.
I'm not excited about the prospect of paying more taxes, but I believe in shared community values. If the children in our community do well, our community will thrive. If our children do not do well, our community will wither. The reality is that property values are tied to the quality of education and if schools are in good shape our children are more apt to do well.
But deep inside I have something larger than these concerns, and that is a sense of hope. Tuesday night I will watch the election returns come in. The way Brown Deer votes will speak volumes about our community and about our future. It will tell us whether we believe in shared community values or whether we are simply looking out for our own pocketbooks, no matter what the ramifications are for our neighbors.
UPDATE:
All 4 School Referendums failed in a crushing defeat and Bruce
Thomas was rejected by voters.
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Dennis Griffin |
1,749
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37% |
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Mark Levine (inc) |
1,610
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34% |
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Bruce Thomas |
1,374 |
29% |
| BUSTED!
Who's behind CRG? Click
here to see a
captured image from the web page of Milwaukee's self proclaimed
"citizen watchdog". |
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