Tonight the Pulaski County Board of Supervisors and the Pulaski County School Board will meet to discuss a host of important issues around both the new middle school as well other school related expenses. (Find the Agenda here.) I should note that the meeting will be at the IT Training Room at 89 Commerce Street S.W. (Maple […]
Today I read Andy McCready’s long opinion piece in the Pulaski Patriot. While Mr. McCready uses many true facts, I could write 10,000 words about how they are presented without sufficient context. However, I’ll focus on a few key points organized around his topic headings. Pulaski County Spending: While Pulaski County has increased its contribution […]
Schools Cannot be Fixed for only $9 million Recently, I noticed that Andy McCready gave an interview to WSLS in which he stated that the “Plan B” for the middle schools if the referendum fails is to enact a $9.3 million dollar plan. The Plan, seen in its entirety here, can best be described as […]
Let’s imagine you’re striking out from home for the first time. Growing up, you felt like your family never really knew how to handle money. So the day you get your first job, you also go out and hire the services of a personal financial advisor. Not just any financial advisor though: a highly qualified […]
On July 13, we published a survey to collect feedback on the Pulaski County School Board’s proposal for a new middle school. In nine days, 749 people responded. Of course the responses are not representative of the entire county, for a variety of reasons. Since it was distributed via social media, respondents were likely a […]
If your news feed looks anything like ours right now, it is probably full of stories about Russia, the proposed new Pulaski County Middle School, and the Senate’s health care plan, in that order. We’re not going to touch the Russia story at this point, but we do want to take a look at how […]
Last night I spoke at the Board of Supervisors meeting, in order to make sure that both they and the public were aware of the options available to them in response to the consolidated middle school resolution passed from the School Board. Their options are as follows: Do nothing- The Board of Supervisors is not […]
I’m often told by fellow citizens that Pulaski County just doesn’t have the money to spend on things like schools, because “where would that money come from?” So after spending some time with the County budget, I sent the County a few Freedom of Information Act requests to clear up some of my confusion about […]
So I’ve gotten a lot of comments and concerns about wrapped debt financing. After spending several years working on legal issues related to the Financial Crisis, I completely understand people having an aversion to financing arrangements that look too good to be true. To be clear, a “wrapped” debt service is not an unusual financing […]
Now that we have a formal proposal for the new Pulaski County Middle School, I thought it was time to explain some of the numbers and try to address some of the common questions I’ve heard about the school. First, it’s important to understand the financing arrangement that the School Board has recommended to the […]