Is there a kind of Nostradamus living among us in Oak Harbor?

In the last few weeks I have read of Oak Harbor schools “discovering” empty classrooms, facing a serious budget crisis and in need to cut about $3 million to balance the budget for 2007-2008.

All of these discoveries seem troublingly familiar to me. Wasn’t it William G. Burnett and a couple of other well-meaning citizens who stated all this would happen and substantiated their claims with very compelling data in their “letters to the editor” over the past few years? Unfortunately, their predictions were pooh-poohed as being baseless and over-reactive.

It’s very sad that their accurate predictions were ignored by the politically motivated decision makers who had another agenda, an agenda that hindsight proves to have been out of step with reality. The taxpayers lose again.

I thank Mr. Burnett and all the others who saw the future. We need their wisdom and personal efforts to cause decisions based on intelligent data. Keep trying, folks. Someday maybe the narrow-minded politically motivated might start basing their decisions on facts and real needs. I still say reform must start at the top.

Bill Strowbridge

Oak Harbor