While public attention regarding Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200 has recently been focused on what the school board may or may not do with regard to custodial services, a related and far more significant development has taken place with precious little attention given it. In its regular January public board meeting, the board passed a unanimous resolution to the effect that it will undertake a major shift in its long-range financial planning direction. It estimated that, given its level of expenditures and its then-current assumptions about the future direction of change in its major expenditure levels (upward), it is likely that the district will have spent its reserves and will probably have to ask taxpayers for another tax increase by 2018. The January resolution was a signal of its unanimous intention to halt, insofar as possible, its growth in expenditures (beyond the level of increase in the urban consumer price index) over the next nine years, and to keep its expenditures within its income, without requiring another tax increase.
Further, the board indicated its resolve to fund its inevitable new spending requirements by developing a concrete method for setting its priorities, so that new needs can be met by shifting spending levels in accord with new priorities.
It may be that none of the local news media chose to report this issue because resolutions are mere words and not deeds. With public bodies, the process of making deliberate change in its long-range direction can only come about by making a written public declaration of its intentions. This public declaration serves two essential functions. First, it provides the impetus to have an open public debate toward the goal of testing whether or not this new policy direction meets with the approval of a majority of voters. If it does not, a change in direction can be brought about by the board or, if necessary, by the voters. The second function is to provide the public with a tool to remind the board of its words of commitment, words that can be easily forgotten with the passage of time, change in membership, and pressures to spend more in some areas without cutting in others.
Of course, a halt in the escalation of spending is not an absolute necessity. We can easily sustain higher tax levels by forcing out lower-income residents and by bringing in a more affluent group of taxpayers. But is this what we want? I don’t.
Ralph Lee is an Oak Park resident and D200 board member.