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About Me
- the Winchester Informer
- I am part of a group of Winchester citizens completely opposed to dirty and hazardous businesses, like asphalt and wood burning plants wanting to come into town at the expense of our quality of life. I am concerned about preserving the rural character of Winchester. These types of development have no benefits for Winchester citizens and they create many health hazards and will cause the destruction of green space. Our Winchester is known for its precious natural resources; dramatic rocky slopes, unique wetlands and abundant wildlife. I feel there are many questions concerning these proposed projects that outweigh any benefits. The increase in traffic along existing streets and noise and air pollution would be very significant. I am also concerned that the town infrastructure cannot cope with the problems these types of businesses will demand. Furthermore, I am very discouraged with the Planning Board and Zoning Boards and feel they have been negligent in their duties to protect neighboring residents from health hazards and safety issues that will surely arise and affect the lives and livelihoods of many citizens.
26 comments:
Yes! Before we lose our accreditation and we all go broke sending our money to other towns to spend on their schools. Last year's school budget was over 10 million dollars, which is horrendous for this town. If we are going to spend this kind of money, we should be spending it in Winchester. If there are parents in this town who want their kids going to other schools, then let then foot the bill themselves. It's well past time to re-open our school and stop this nonsense.
Our high school kids going to Keene high is one thing, I attended keene high myself, though it may be expensive it offers a lot of classes like building trades, auto, horticulture and a working culinary class. But all the coded or special needs kids going of to special schools because of lazy parents and teachers who do not want to deal with them is what is killing our budget. I believe hiring trained teachers to teach our special needs would have to be a better and less expensive choice that shipping them off, For the price it cost us to send 1 child to clark school with transportation, we could hire a teacher qualified to work with hearing impaired children and be able to help out several children if needed.
II don't have the answer, iv talked to a few parents and students and they tell me the kids that go to Keene still are behind. I would think from what they say education in Winchester still has a way to go..Its tough when the voters really don't have much expertize in the education field. It maybe worth a look, but i think most of the kids are getting a good education in Keene.
There is a petition for a school warrant being passed around to study if would be feasible to return the children back to Winchester. If passed by the voters it would return the children one grade at a time over 4 years. This years asking budget for the voters to accept will be 10,288,109.00 and the default budget will $10,495.000.00. This will be a 4% increase over last years budget. In this is an added 20% increase for teachers pensions and 4% pay raise for the teacher. There was no real interest from the school budget committee or the supervisor union to lower what we pay to support the school. It is time we take control of our destination here in Winchester. We can no longer afford the high cost of supporting the Keene school system and to bus our children to other school for special classes. It is costing the tax payers over $1,000.000.00 just for this busing.
Where do you plan on putting these kids, do you understand the cost of building a new high school??? (as the old one is now the middle school) do you have the tax money to build a auto shop and building trades a culinary class or radio station you think we are paying a lot now wait till you start talking to contractors about building this stuff. I am willing to bet the people that want to bring our high school kids back don't have high school age kids.
You want to cut the school budget get a list of all the special needs kids being shipped off somewhere you will be amazed how much it is costing us to educate a very few that I feel could be educated right here.dont make our high school kids suffer because of that.
ggggrrrrrrrrrrrr..........
I feel another case of our kids taking a bad hit because of a low income town with high number of special needs.
If you want to take the time and effort to research something
why don’t you research why we welcome so much welfare family’s to out town I know every town has there share but our is way higher than other towns.
It seems the sad fact higher number of welfare families higher number special needs, This seems to be a fact and once again our kids with good grades and moms and dads that work with them every night with home work and work at taking a active role in educating our youth are constantly getting the short end of the stick. Trailer parks and low income apartment building are killing our tax base and school budget, not sending them to Keene.
I know these view are not politically right....but is is the sad truth
I agree we should start by solving are special needs problem, and i have no idea how. I like the idea of not busing them all over the place. As for low income, i think its the price we pay for being on the Mass line, Why in hell we let them build the project on rte78 is beyond me.Back in the old days Bucky Jones would feed them a meal and send them packing.
The solution is to get our State Represenatives and Senate to change our Welfare laws to be in conjunction with Massachusetts. The fact that they only get two years in MA and then come across the border into New Hampshire for another two more years is the reason we have so many in our town.
We need it set to just TWO YEARS. The point is, once they are in the system, they know how to work it!
Ask the Welfare agent! Every time someone crosses the border, we have to house them and feed them and pay for their children to attend our schools.
And NO, we don't need to build a high school for our children in Winchester. In the long run the expense of sending them to Keene is money well spent.
Why should parents who send their children to school in Winchester and others with no children be forced to pay for students who want to basically go to school just to learn a trade? As someone who spoke earlier said; this is very expensive and really not fair to the other families in town. As for these special needs children, costing us over 1 million dollars to bus them to other schools is simply too much of a burden on all of us. While I feel for children with special needs, we need to come up with a better solution than digging into the pockets of taxpayers every year. Educating them right here in town would be far less expensive than busing them all over the county. As for families on welfare; lets be fair to everyone and not be picking on a group of people who through no fault of their own are down on their luck and not as well off as some of us. I suppose we could lump in the elderly and those poor souls on disability too. The real blame lies with the state, school boards and teachers who do not want to deal with them. When I was a youngster going to school, we had special needs classrooms at our school for those with learning disabilities and a detention room for those that couldn't follow the rules. Today's, namby, pamby society has a category for everything and it all comes with a high price tag.
It always boggles my mind how we vote for a default budget which is always greater than the one we had the year before.
Regarding the school budget - you have to admit that a teacher's salary is peanuts, but their job security is incredibly solid. The rest of us could get laid off, but we are required to continue to pay their salary.
The most frustrating thing is that our SAU's lawyer has our budget committee by the balls. They claim we are required to continue children in the special ed courses and programs through until they graduate, regardless of significant improvements in behavior, etc. Even though each child goes before a review board each year, we are required to continue them with the special needs program. The parents "might sue us" if we don't. Does this make any sense to YOU?
The saddest part, is that if we asked for the budget to be slashed - the "normal" kids (that have the potential to be productive citizens in our community) are the ones that suffer. While the boys in Vermont are off skiing / snowboarding once a week. The "normal" kids can't even afford to go on one field trip a year.
Perhaps we should have some kind of authority over what they are billing us for these children. That's where the highway robbery is coming from. Perhaps, (this is just a thought), we should sue the special needs schools for billing us for their outlandish spending? The whole business of the door to door delivery of special needs children is another. Why can't the parents drop off their child at the police station parking lot each day, and have them take one bus to the designated school and back?
Im not picking on people down on there luck, I dont like career welfare and generations of welfare. And when does being down on your luck mean you dont work year after year after year. I dont like my 2 honor role sons always taking the hit because special needs budgets cant be touched. Im sick of parents exagerating there childrens problems to get them into special schools, Im sick of people not wanting our high school kids going to Keene a far more better school with many more classes than we can provide and again I state how much do you think it will cost to build a high school for us $$$$$$$$$$$
small town america is finding it impossible to educate k -12 on a small town budget, just talk to any one fron hinsdale they are starting to realize what a mess they have themselves in trying to do all 12 grades alone! If we didnt send our kids to Keene we needed to partner with Hinsdale but that wasnt going to happen.
The part about slashing budgets is so true, if voters slash the school budget it all comes from the standard budget, so the kids who will grow up and work and pay taxes will take the hit all alone, while the ones who may never work and do there part in supporting a community dont have to lose anything, they can still go to the fancy special schools who we cant slash the budget on, and they can ride in one of those real nice tucker tranportation vans all by themselves like a limo. and the part about field trips is so true and sad, my kids dont go on any good field trips anymore because of expensive transportation cost etc. but the special kids go to all kinds of great places with the best transportation money can buy. If we are paying to send someone to some fancy school like lets use Clark in mass. as an example maybe the parents could at least get of there butts and drive them to school themselves. This country is so backwords it makes me sick, if you work real hard at a low paying job and cant make ends meet or cant pay your mortgage there is not really any help for you, but if you sit on your butt and not work at all my tax dollars will pay your rent buy your oil and put steak in your belly. If you are a normal kid with parents that do homework with you every night and push you to strive for your very best your budget and school choices keep getting cut. But if your parents are lazy and convince someone that there kids cant deal with a ordinary class, no expense will be spared on this child and these policy's suck and Im sick of it. things need to change the middle class is vanishing
This discussion is great, Its the first time every one can make there views known.Let your friends and neighbors in on these three web sites. Keep your eyes open and log on often. And great job Mr. web site.
Being one that has wrote many of the comments on this particular blog I must state I am not against children with true special needs and I feel much compassion for them and the parents, I am not against people temporarily down on there luck and rely on welfare for a short time between jobs, I am not against the old or disabled in fact i feel we forget about our seniors after they have worked hard all there lives at old time wages trying to survive in new time inflation. But to those who are lazy and want others to educate there kids because they cant be bothered, to all those that abuse a system that needs to be changed I am after you, your time will come, if not now then down the road. we all have to answer to somebody someday no matter wich religion you chose to follow or use to justify your actions.
As a community we must solve our tax rate problem. Our town has become a magnet for special needs children? Teaching and busing the special needs children (so called label-ed children) are our biggest tax problem. Many cost us over $40,000 and some over $200,000.00. It is just another segment of the "secret agenda" of the school administration and the teachers union. This industry has become a travesty. Unlike an industry manufacturing widgets, the school administration constructs and products label-ed children. Crazy ideal thoughts? Maybe! Just look at the amount of people we employee and their salaries at our school, over 120 with administration, teachers aid and janitorial....... Simple math, more special needs children. plus, more facility, which = more school admin which = more money for the facilitators. This came about because, as we voted we entrusted the people we elected to act in a prudent way in the best interest of the citizens of Winchester. We allow the most liberal of us to make the decisions for the rest of us? The liberal thinking is the children each need their own special teacher and the poor teacher needs an aid and we put them on a special bus so the other children don't make faces at them and hurt their so sensitive feelings. We are becoming a society of wimps and so called do gooders.
These people we voted in and trusted will cry "we can not afford to build a school". We will not know this until we have a study and we can not get a study done without the voters approval. We are heating the old school, for what? As voters we can give Land use Margret Sharra $5,000.00 for something we already know or fire dept another fire truck, why not have a study to see if we need to build another school.
heating the old school for the middle school kids , makes sense
If you have any friends on the budget comm. talk to them. Reading the minutes it scares the hell out of me. Some of the members must have a lot more money than the rest of us. It blows my mind how other towns and states are getting it and we are business as usual.
To the last Anonymous; "There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is there is very little about which one can be certain!"
To the person who made the comment in regards to Bob Davis posting under the anonymous identity, first off your remarks have nothing to do with the topic of discussion and your facts are a fantasy of your own imagination. As administrator of this site, I can tell you that there have been only two instances of people posting under different identities and none were Bob Davis.
I don't understand why people such as yourself come here to cause issues, I would think there would be enough to discuss with the topics which have been posted. Though we welcome comments both pro and con, attempts to discredit or belittle someone are not welcome and will be removed. I would assume that the information we have provided is having a profound affect on those who wished it all to be kept quietly under wraps. Your attempts to discredit us and the public information we have published fall on deaf ears.
I wasnt discrediting anything
my observation was even when people post under anonymous said.... sometimes it is still clear as a bell whom they may be
If you look at my original statement (I think it has been removed...) I wasnt discrediting any one or any thing it was just a observation,
With that said I think this sight is becoming as guilty of half cocked statements, Wrong facts, and to much hearsay,as you say the "Town" is. It seemed to start with facts that people would research, now to me it seems like a angry mob (with such a high tax rate I dont blame you) but you have become what you started out to stop. the researching seemed to stop, alot of the statements being made are totally wrong and not backed up and harmfull to the good things about our town
this sight can continue to uncover "FACTS" and bring them to the light or it can wallow around in the lies and half truths that brought us into this mess to begin with
Seeing as how you weren't satisfied posting this in just one discussion and had to post the same comments again here, I'll post my response again here also.
First off, this is a blog, started by a few people fed up with the way they were being treated at Planning Board meetings and the obvious pandering and preferential treatment given to some developers at the expense of the people here in town. Along the way people in town and in the know started sending in information or providing links to information showing just how many problems there are with our town government here in Winchester. We expanded the blog to provide this information for everyone and also started an alternate site with links to the very information we were posting and discussing. You'll find that the information in those original links has been altered or upgraded by the town, as they say. We're not responsible for the attitudes, or postings of others or the content of those posts. To accuse us of being guilty of posting "half cocked" statements, untruths etc. is poppycock. An uproar was made by one of the BOS members that some information that had posted was in error and as we confirmed that fact we contacted the poster and the info was corrected. All info posted by us has been checked, verified and when possible a direct link has been provided to it. We are not at all like those in charge at the town. We do not hide anything, nor will we refuse to answer a question or provide information when asked. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and thoughts and points of view, yourself included. We are still gathering facts on a number of topics and when we have all of the information and it has been verified it will become more topics for discussion. If you find fault or are offended by remarks made by others, then that is your problem and you have several choices. Stop visiting and reading what upsets you; post facts contrary to what you have read and help provide truthful information or sit back, point fingers and continue to put down those of us attempting to make a difference.
I was told by a former high school teacher from Winchester, down the road we need to have a regional school with Hindale and possibly Richmond.Its just a thought, something to think about.I think we should solve the special needs problem first.
The Anonymous poster above obviously is a person mad as Hell at us, the winchesterinformer for attacking the "quid pro quo" here in the town of Winchester. For those of you who do not understand what "quid pro qou" is, in broad terms it's favors or items that are traded and deals that are made among a circle of individuals in return for something of value. Usually the transaction is questionable and for economic gains.
This quid pro quo circle includes elected officials, employees of the town and their circle of friends within the circle, to say, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. What we the winchesterinformer are claiming is we have your game and we are going to expose you, your friends and the rest of the clowns that were elected to protect the citizens of Winchester.
Yes! I am not afraid to put my name on top and not hide under any other name. Yes! I know how to cut and paste too !
Hey Anonymous poster asking for more FACTS it looks like you got your wish. I see two new topics for discussion on this board and the information sure looks real. What do you have to say now?
The fact is the school should take a good long look a ways to educate with less people, the way things are going we won't be able to keep any school open. The kids that hit Keene High aren't ready, any one that retires gets to come back part time, as we lose Jobs and don't get raises the school gets bigger and bigger. It may be time to replace the principal with a business man or woman. I understand that discipline in our school is non-existent.Its a sad state of affairs, with no change in sight.
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