Letter to our Educators, and our Elected officials

Dear Educators and elected officials,


I am sorry that the economic pain we the areas parents have been feeling these last two years have finally hit you. I understand your worries, The parents in your district have also been worried. For our income, savings, and home values have been cut in half. The taxes and fees that you have imposed on us over the last ten years to fund education has taken a greater bite out of our ability to live and flourish. Friends that have operated businesses in the area are closing their doors and neighbors are leaving and returning to California. Many of us that own businesses have had to take second and third part time jobs to help make it. We have had to reduce spending at our own households, and teach our children the difference between wants and needs. Personally my two businesses that I have operated for nearly thirty years have become a hobby without the ability to pay me for nearly two years. Yet for those of us in the private sector, Who have made majors cuts, we cannot support your efforts. I feel that many of you have been sheltered from the effects that many of us find ourselves in. I do not want to cause you any pain, yet if we do not all share in this economic reversal we will have a system of haves and haves not, that for all the political rhetoric, we find the rift growing farther and farther apart.

This is a time to embrace the present, and be in full agreement that the future has not yet been written. The economic health of the present, will to a great degree dictate what that future will hold. I am not in agreement with your position that we need to hold the line on spending and find new tax revenues. The business community is reeling at the moment. we have not yet found a bottom and to continue to place economic pressure on business models that are currently not producing a profit. this belief of yours will only continue to erode our ability to ensure that there will be funding to continue to pay your salaries. Some of you will have to go, for that I am sorry, just as sorry as I was when I had to close economic doors that had paid me for twenty eight years. We have to find a point that we can begin to find a balance, a balance between public services and economic prosperity. Until then we are in a era of economic uncertainty, that will continue to erode our social programs, and trust.