While thrilled with the outcome of Tuesday’s special election, we’re saddened by the turnout, with only 12 percent of those eligible going to the polls to cast a ballot either for or against the building of a new swimming pool.
It’s not that we anticipated a large turnout. It’s just that we thought it would be higher than 12 percent. After all, the outcome did involve raising taxes.
Almost 36 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in a referendum on raising property taxes in the Barr-Reeve School District on Tuesday. (The school easily prevailed, getting 83 percent of the vote, almost exactly what pool supporters received here.)
We’d predicted participation in the 15-20 percent range on the pool vote; secretly, we hoped it would be 25-30 percent.
But no.
Had we erred in extrapolating the support we’d witnessed in the relatively small sampling of voters we’d spoken with in the last few weeks, assuming (with the expected result) that it spread out to cover the majority of city residents?
Could it be that the vast majority of city residents doesn’t care whether Vincennes has a public swimming pool? Are residents that apathetic about their community?
No, they’re not.
Overwhelmingly, the community does support construction of a new pool, just as a large majority of those in the North Knox School District supported the building of a new auxiliary gymnasium.
Residents supported the actions of the respective elected bodies, the city council here, the school board there, and didn’t see the need to have to affirm that support with a vote or signature.
These referenda and signature campaigns are a result of state lawmakers’ uncalled for meddling in local government.
There’s a view that locally-elected officials can’t be trusted, that without the oversight and supervision of the state legislature (in the form of restrictive laws) local city councils and school boards will spend tax dollars wastefully, “burdening” property owners.
We’d be the last to argue that there’s never been an instance of poor judgment on the part of local officials.
But compared to the nonsense state government gets up to and the tax dollars wasted by members of the Legislature, local officials have been near saintly in their prudence and wisdom in looking out for the interests of their constituents.
We don’t hold a statewide referendum every two years to “ratify” the biennial state budget adopted by the General Assembly — although perhaps we should.
Tuesday’s referendum on a new swimming pool, like the signature campaign earlier this year on the new gym at North Knox, was a waste of time and money.
Yes, voters (as well as property owners in the case of the gym) “had their say” through these extraordinary methods of gaging public support for the projects.
But what we heard was a whisper, not a shout; only 12 percent turnout here, about the same in North Knox.
And the projects have been delayed, probably at an unnecessary cost to the taxpayers who were to be “protected” by this system.
http://suncommercial.com/articles/2013/05/08/opinions/opinions/doc518b083b71b36740607602.txt
