Plainfield BOE Potpourri

I read today’s blog in reference to a BOE member’s concern of, where have I been. Maybe I should ask the question, where have you been?

One: Ten years ago, I fought and was able to get Plainfield back as an Abbott School District which pours in over $100 million a year, a fee the Plainfield taxpayers would have had to pay for. Over ten years, that is over $1 billion in savings I have saved the Plainfield taxpayers.

Two: With school construction, I was able to secure funds to build a new Emerson school, as well as remedy other schools within the district. This is a funding source I fought for and won on behalf of the district I represent.

Three: When the BOE left a line item out of the budget that could have cost the BOE over $2 million, while at the same time the BOE was not filling positions and accumulating over $3 million which was borderline criminal, I was able to work with the County Superintendent and the Commissioner of Education and disarm that ordeal.

This last year with the circus over at the Board, which I choose not to be a part of, including the circus that is currently going on at the Board which I will refrain from getting involved in, was and still is an embarrassment to the City of Plainfield.

So for someone to ask me to come by and have a chat, someone of that caliber, I am clearly not interested, especially when they have for the last six months sat quiet as the governor cut over $8 million from our children in education and library resources. Now the governor’s budget has passed and NOW we hear the BOE and Council, but were conducting ‘business as usual’ when the budget was under negotiation.

The Board and Council spend the majority of their time dealing with personal agendas and 'business as usual' politics. Prime example, the Board brought back an attorney that was a part of the management team that basically embarrassed the City and drew up legal fees that are also embarrassing. Some of these legal fees that this firm has clocked along with some of the high-priced staff members who make well over $100,000 could have been eliminated with this year’s school budget. Those dollars could have gone towards our children and working with the library community.

And now, you have done the damage, and now would like to have chitchat. Maybe when the community brought Fox 5 ‘Shame on You’ to Plainfield earlier, we should invite them back to question the current Board on the decisions they have made today.

In case you have not found time to read the newspapers, the job I have been elected to as a State Legislator, I am doing. I am not embarrassing the City with the job that I am doing. This is why I am supporting the Governor in moving the Board of Education elections to November, so that it will take more than a handful of friends to get elected.