Adequate is no longer good enough?
At one of the public information sessions about Concord’s new middle school, I said to a school board member, “We need a new school, but an adequate one, not an extravagant one.” The reply I got was, “Adequate is not good enough.”
That view seems to have taken hold in our city government. Most everyone I know agrees that the state of New Hampshire is derelict in funding our schools. But lately, some Concord city councilors and school board members are pointing their fingers at the state in order to justify their recent spending spree — $155 million middle school, $41 million police station and plenty more in the pipeline.
Certainly, taxpayers should be more aggressively hounding the state legislature to do the right thing for school funding. But until it does, our city officials should be tightening their belts instead of pummeling taxpayers with platinum-plated projects. This wouldn’t mean no new spending, but it does mean reasonable spending. We could have a new middle school for $100 million, and a new police station for $25 million. Concord taxpayers, buckle up. The word “adequate” is disappearing from the dictionary of the people spending your money.