Exactly two hours and twenty-four minutes after the polls closed, the Board of Education finally made public the election results. A total of 1,345 voters--14.12 percent of the potential voters--cast 861 votes to approve the budget and 485 votes to reject it. The BOE candidate with the highest number of votes was Lou Zapp, who garnered 858 votes, followed by incumbent Michael Zibella with 830 votes.
Of the write-in candidates, none of whom actually campaigned, Peter Meyer received 28 votes, John Friedman received 19, and Jon Spampinato received 5. One person in Claverack wrote in Diana Doto, who is already on the school board, although her name is now Diana Howard.
And so it goes.
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I think it's safe to assume that there isn't going to be an answer coming from this new school board. All three candidates were by all measures quite bad but that of course didn't stop the electorate from voting in the worst of the three who made it abundantly clear that they have no clue how to fix anything. The one coming in third, the pastor, did at least once use the word "audit".
ReplyDeleteWe of course don't do this in the HCSD where the mandate of the day is to keep underperforming but protect the jobs. It is what matters: Screw education and definitely screw the kids - the only ones that can't vote.
I take some pleasure out of the fact that I wrote in both Peter Meyer and John Friedman. But it is ultimately a shallow victory.
I’m looking forward to when Hudson finally does a citywide revaluation and the people who were underpaying feel the brunt of the tax increases they voted for. City and school taxes have jumped massively since 2019 and the recipients of the “Welcome Stranger” assessments have been carrying the burden thus far. Even my own taxes have decreased in the past couple of years because of this practice. There will be a lot of folks priced out the day it comes. But nobody understands assessments and property taxes and the effects happen so incrementally that voters don’t know how to react. The system is working exactly how it was designed; a true diffusion of responsibility and the frog is slowly boiled. The ratchet only tightens in one direction. Eventually we’ll all get priced out. At least property owners will be able to sell and F off to a more boring place, but how do renters and younger families stand a chance?
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