Make rational decision Nov. 8

Here’s what you don’t know: Five years ago, the board of trustees of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District agreed to create an endowment to be funded by 2007 with 4% of its annual budget. The plan was that upon completion of its bond payments, the district would have an identical amount set aside so future bonds -- taxes to you and me -- would not be necessary.

We have about 14 months left to go before 2007, and the board has less than $1 million in the endowment. That is not even close to being on track. Put it another way: This endowment is supposed to be $110 million by 2028.

No one twisted the arm of the board to fund the endowment. It is something the trustees willingly agreed to. In fact, their commitment to this set aside was a key piece of their marketing campaign to get you to approve Measure A in 2000.

But five years later, they have only set aside a small fraction of the money they promised.

This failure to meet yet another financial commitment is further proof of what many in Newport-Mesa believe -- that your school board, while well-intentioned, is not very good at handling your money.

The level of their commitment to the endowment they promised is not fiction. It’s a verifiable fact -- a public record you can confirm. You can also confirm their failure to keep their promise to you.

The big picture in the debate over approval of this tax is not that our schools are in dire need of the money, because they are not. That much was told to me in a refreshingly honest comment by Yes on Measure F chairman Mark Buchanan and reported in this space on Oct. 19. “We don’t have to do these [Measure F upgrades], and the schools would be just fine,” said Buchanan.

The big picture is declining to reward the bad behavior of bureaucrats, of sending the message to your school board that you’ve had enough, that you are closing the checkbook and forcing them to live within their means, just as you have to do every day.

Think of it as a tough love approach to fiscal responsibility.

The principal criticism of this bond is not that it will or will not raise your taxes. (It will, and even the Measure F supporters will come clean on that point.) It is that the bond should not have been necessary in the first place.

Ask anyone in sales or anyone who has to convince someone else to take action what the most important element of the relationship is, and he or she will say: “Trust.” If you don’t trust the person with whom you are dealing, there is no deal.

But trust has to be earned. Trust is not earned by making promises. It is earned by keeping them.

The debate over Measure F is one of trust. The evidence -- the rational benchmarks to which you must look to determine whether you should trust your board with even more of your tax money -- point to a track record of mismanagement by your school board.

The request for $163 million five years ago was the result of a broken promise to maintain your schools. Instead, maintenance was deferred for years, while costs piled up. The second request for more tax dollars to help fund what your board neglected to do the first time around is another broken promise, for despite the attempt to revise history, you were never led to believe that your $163 million would do anything but set all the schools right once and for all.

The puny amount in your endowment is another broken promise.

There is no history of any attempt by your board to build fiscal trust with you through their actions. Instead, they’re counting on you to feel sorry for the kids on the brochures and to vote to bail them out of their latest jam.

The decision to tax yourself to the tune of $282 million over the next several decades is being sold to you as an emotional one. Measure F supporters are sending you warm and fuzzy images of kids holding signs and promoting the bond in an effort to make you feel like the Grinch if you don’t approve it.

The tactic of tugging on your heartstrings is an attempt to divert attention from many years of fiscal mismanagement by your school board. Had your school board acted responsibly with your hard-earned tax dollars five years ago, there would not be a $282-million bond on the ballot in 10 days.

They’re counting on you to make an irrational, emotional decision instead of a level-headed factual one.

But rewarding bad behavior comes to an end on Nov. 8.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at (714) 966-4664 or send story ideas to dailypilot@latimes.com.

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