From the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel:
Brown County should take a lesson from Fort Wayne Community Schools on how to deal with voter rejection: Don’t give up. Instead, give the voters something they will find more palatable.
Officials in that southern Indiana county wanted to spend $4 million on a courthouse renovation project, which would have made the building safer and compliant with accessibility guidelines, as well as adding additional office space. But opposition mounted to the project, and a petition drive against it was organized. A counter-petition drive in favor of the proposal followed.
The votes have now been counted, and the wishes of Brown County residents are not ambiguous: Only 182 petitioners were for the project, and about 1,400 were against it. Officials now must wait a full year before bringing an alternative proposal before voters.
Something more realistic, perhaps – a little more modest and defensible?
That was the solution found by FWCS officials after voters overwhelmingly rejected the Yellow Ribbon Task Force’s school renovation plan that would have cost a breathtaking $500 million, not to mention the $350 million in interest on the bonds to pay for the project.
The school board waited a few years, then came back with a scaled-down plan: a three-phase project to spend $119 million to fix the worst building problems in the first phase, then $60 million and $62 million in the second and third phases. This time the voters said yes.
That’s the approach Brown County officials should take, too.
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http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130926/EDITORIAL/130929799/0/SEARCH
