The creeping featuritus of a proposed stadium is awesome to behold, especially when the budget goes from $17,000 to $5.5 million dollars in just a few months. Maybe if people had spent a little more time with their head in a book instead of football helmet this whole process might be easier to explain.

What about maintaining this thing for the life of the bond? Mowers, groundskeepers, paint, light bulbs, janitors, guards, shoulder pads, electricity, heat, etc, etc, aren’t free the last time I looked. We are in this pickle because maintenance didn’t seem to be a priority on the old facility.

Now, all this might sound like I’m anti-school or anti-school board, but nothing is farther from the truth. I think the board has one of the least desirable jobs known to mankind, they are perpetually between a rock and hard place. I want the schools to be a safe, desirable place everyone wants to be around, I want the students of any age to get a top quality, useful education, but I don’t want to feed a bunch of bureaucracies, egos or empire builders.

For the most part I think the front line employees of the district are very budget conscious, unfortunately, a lot of the money isn’t under their control to do with as they see fit. Spending mega-money for something as marginally useful as a football stadium when the same money could buy a significant amount of classrooms or teaching materials is ridiculous. When you present me with a reasonable plan to set up a nice field with some bleachers, a couple of goal posts and a track around the outside, I’ll listen and probably go for it. Better yet, how about the Rotary Club building a facility with the $1,000,000 and not charging the taxpayers one dime?

Speaking for myself, I do not want to pay for an Oak Harbor Kingdome.

Rick Kiser

Oak Harbor