Your tax dollars at work - More than $468,000,000 of them!

Be sure to watch and read this news article on WIS-TV about the use of your new bond money in Richland School District Two. Click here to go to the WIS-TV story. At the bottom of the WIS-TV story, click through to see about the projects. This connects to the Richland Two website. One of the tabs will be to "High Bond Projects". They mean High School Bond Projects. Keep clicking.

As you'll see in the news story, the District is to manage the new $468,406,000 ($381,952,000 + 86,454,000). That's almost half a BILLION dollars.

Now take a look at the Board of Trustees of Richland School District Two. You'll find them here. These seven people who are not only responsible for managing this new $468 Million, but also millions of dollars of other assets, thousands of students and hundreds of teachers.

Does any reader (or voter) know or care about their backgrounds, skills, training, financial education, critical understanding of financial statements and economic forecasts?

Some of them are closely related to the world of education. Does that necessarily make them the best choices to steer the finances of a large school district?

Every taxpayer should be paying close attention to the School Board and showing up at meetings to examine how the Board conducts business. If you attended 3-4 Board meetings recently, you'd fire most of them, if you owned this business.

Most of them are nice people. I say "most", because some are not. Or they too might even be "nice" people, just ignorant in certain matters or careless in others. One owes over $51,000 in fines and penalties to the South Carolina Ethics Commission. Another made false statements in a police report recently.

But which of them (any?) really has the experience and expertise to direct the management of this new half-billion dollars and the other millions in assets? They should stop nit-picking small matters at Board meetings and concentrate on the important stuff.

When the next School Board election comes around in 2020, perhaps some highly-experienced business people will run for election. The positions of Trustees Elkins-Johnson, Agostini and Shadd will be on the ballot in 2020.

The other four (McKie, Caution-Parker, Holmes and Manning) are safe until 2022.

If more poorly-qualified trustees are elected in 2020, Richland Two will enter very dangerous waters. The rocks are already in sight. The coral reefs are too close.