London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

And you thought subsidising the poor was bad…

Millions of tax dollars taken from hard-working Americans are going to subsidise one of the wealthiest school districts in the country

The Bronxville School (as it is called, since all grades from kindergarten to 12th are in the same building) ostensibly has a number of things going for it. It has a rather splendid collegiate gothic building in an excellent setting in one of the handsomest villages in all of the Empire State. Its school district is a mere square-mile, meaning most students can walk to school and it doesn’t even have a bus system. It has a private foundation funded independently by parents and alumni to support the school. What more could a public school possibly need?

Well, according to the geniuses down in Washington, D.C., $5.4 million in federal grants. The school, you see, is built on a site which frequently floods. Our main street in Bronxville is called Pondfield Road for a reason: the field with the pond is the open space where the school now stands. It’s been flooding for decades and so floods should come as no surprise. The nor’easter that blew through town a year ago flooded the school severely, closing it for over a week. The flooding was particularly bad during the last nor’easter because the school had spent a great deal of money (privately-raised, not from the public purse) to replace its natural football field with a lower-maintenance fake turf alternative. They did this instead of saving the money for, oh, say, one of those floods that happens every so often.

The money has been secured from the Federal Emergency Management Agency by our congresswoman, Nita Lowey (D). “When a natural disaster occurs, the federal government has a responsibility to help communities recover,” said Lowey, who neglected to provide any legal or moral backing for such an untruthful and baseless claim.

The school district of one of the wealthiest communities in the country is filching off the hard-working people of America in order to clean up the mess that is a direct result of its own poor spending decisions and inability to plan properly. Is there no shame?

Published at 9:28 pm on Tuesday 29 April 2008. Categories: New York Politics Tags: , , , .
Comments

Andrew, the Conservative Party of New York no doubt still could use your services as a candidate in the Bronxville district. (Certainly they would benefit from your services as a webmaster: http://www.cpnys.org/) Imagine the Wodehousian-Wavian-Bellocian extravaganza your election campaign could be. (No other candidate, for example, would use the word ‘feuilleton’ on the hustings.) Throw your hat in the ring!

— MCNS 30 Apr 2008 12:59 pm
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