Hi everyone. I took last week off for my niece's wedding. The weather cut the party short but it had an old fashioned feel to i., Now my niece can tell her grand children that when she was their age she had to go to a one room church in snow up to her you know what to get married.
I want to commend Superintendent Huckstadt for proposing a tax cut. It was a nice headline to see in the paper -- “School Proposes Tax Cut”, something you don't see very often. I kind of have mixed emotions about cutting staff, in business we should never employ more people than we have work to do, but at the same time since the school employees are the best paid people in our town, I hate to see the loss of a good paying job, especially since so few are to be found in Maquoketa. Either way I think Superintendent Huckstadt, and the board can be commended, building a $6 million dollar addition, and cutting taxes. good job!!
P.S. I am aware they are also factoring in the increased funding from the state, but they were not obligated to pass it on so i still think it is commendable. Yes of course we are paying for it in some way, so let me take this time to say we do need to get away from over reliance on government, and start paying our own way, then we will truly experience the freedom our founding fathers envisioned.
While I am at it, why is it that private industry pays better than public education, for employees with the same training, despite the fact that they have to derive their income from the open market, usually on a charge per service basis. Public schools have a guaranteed income through the tax system. Until we answer this question, I do not think we will have total peace and confidence in our education system.
I see that Pat Deppenwolf died from Bellevue. I was reading about the situation what her sons were going through about having their brother Mike come home from Iraq, and the leave was being denied despite the fact they could prove she was terminally ill. I think it is terrible that nothing got done in this case, it is hard to believe that the service could not spare him for two weeks to go home and see his mother before she died. I know he might have had to take another leave for the funeral, but maybe it was more important to the family, and to her to see him before she died, it is kind of tragic to let him come home now. This is not what we are fighting this war for, I think the family should have been given a choice come home before the death, and not take a leave afterwards, which i can only assume is what the family would have been happy with since they wanted a leave before she passed away. I don't know, but one thing is for sure this was not right!!!!
Timothy L Grover, the plain blunt guy
