1) It’s important that voters recall the Union-Tribune article in 2009 about the SCHOOL POOL boondoggle. The SCHOOL POOL is also called the BBMAC.
2) Here’s the link to the U-T article for your to read. http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2009/Aug/17/1m17pool001630-high-schools-pool-filled-red-ink/
3) Here’s a quote from the U-T article: CUSD spent “$8.76 million to build the pool, drawing from a special local property tax fund for school construction”.
4) This “special local property tax fund for school construction” is the U-T’s way of telling you that in 2005 CUSD issued approximately $10.5 million face value Certificates of Participation (COPs).
5) COPs are public debt instruments like school bonds. COPs are also known as “secret debt” in California. COPs are despised by government watchdogs because COPs don’t require voter approval.
6) The COPs are the sneaky way that CUSD indebted the Coronado public to pay for the School Pool behind our backs, at the exact same time that CUSD said to our faces that “Coronado residents would never have to pay for the School Pool, CUSD would pay to build it, to run it, and CUSD would make a profit from it.” CUSD hasn’t kept any of its promises about the School Pool so far. The School Pool is a financial failure.
7) CUSD buried its true intent for Prop E deep in its required Project List in your Ballot Pamphlet. CUSD says on on page PR-1301-10 of your Ballot Pamphlet, in the eighth sentence up from the bottom of the page, that it will use Prop E bond money to pay for “lease obligations.”
8) “Lease obligations” is CUSD’s way to legally inform Coronado voters, without truly informing voters at all, that Prop E is yet another School Pool scam.
9) Prop E is CUSD’s sneaky way to make residents pay for the SCHOOL POOL boondoggle through a sketchy re-finance scheme using the Prop E School bonds.
10) Voters should disregard the worthless campaign promises of CUSD that “the Pool will be paid off soon” and “the Pool will make money next year.”
11) In the incomplete collection of Purchase Orders that CUSD has released, for only 27 months from July 2011 to September 2013, the Purchase Orders say that CUSD spent over $700,000 on the School Pool boondoggle. CUSD did not make $701,000 on the School Pool over that same time period.
12) Purchase Orders can be fudged. If we had CUSD’s BANK STATEMENTS, we could determine the true figure of what CUSD is spending on the School Pool boondoggle up to today’s date. But CUSD is fighting hard to keep its BANK STATEMENTS secret. CUSD has successfully stonewalled taxpayers for so long that the public won’t get access to CUSD’s Bank Statements until taxpayers are successful in their legal claim after June 3.
13) Well-intentioned Prop E supporters should understand that CUSD is cynically using you as tools to take advantage of ALL Coronado property owners and RENTERS who will bear the burden of the proposed Prop E tax hike.
14) The only way the School Pool has a chance to “be paid off soon,” in the minds of financially irresponsible CUSD officials, is if Coronado voters allow themselves to be convinced into voting for Prop E tax hike ruse. But “paying off” the School Pool COP lease obligation debts with Prop E school bond debts simply burdens Coronado taxpayers and renters DOUBLY. Paying off one debt with another debt is like maxing out one credit card and taking out another one. It’s financial mismanagement.
15) The only way the School Pool will ever “make a profit” is if the YMCA manages it, but CUSD has stubbornly resisted the YMCA solution and, instead, intends to make Coronado residents pay again for the School Pool through the Prop E school bonds.
16) Vote NO on Prop E on June 3.
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