BCFT Blog

It’s been more than a month since the April 8th school millage election and BCFT is still getting blasted on the Baxter Bulletin StoryChat for “spreading misinformation” and generally causing hate and discontent among the citizens of Mountain Home.  Not only are we being accused of doing so, the alleged “misinformation” is being spelled out once again by forum posters so that it is fresh in everyone’s minds.

Unfortunately, what is being repeated is NOT what any BCFT representative said … but what someone with no connection to our group SAID that we said. 

Back in the days before the election, I tried numerous times to set the record straight using facts and figures (and so did a few of our members), but the self-appointed Voice of the Administration was louder than we were and no amount of reasoned rebuttal could break through the constant racket he made. 

I take partial blame for this, because I made a conscious decision early on not to get down in the dirt.  I chose to ignore the mud-slinging and name-calling, and kept silent until there was a need to correct something the opposition said that was patently false.  Those who were in favor of the millage increase used a variety of emotional arguments (”it’s for the children” and ”if we don’t pass this, the state will take over our schools” were the main ones) to convince people to vote their way.  My posts were factual and verifiable — the biggest problem, as I see it, is that the subject matter was so complicated that people still had a hard time understanding … and it’s difficult to trust information you don’t understand. 

It didn’t help that the local newspaper and radio station came out strongly in favor of the millage increase — the newspaper would not publish our letters to the editor, and we were never invited to offer any response to radio editorials and interviews with school administrators. 

Now that the 2008 school millage increase election is history, all we can do is monitor the school construction process from the wings, and impress upon the school board members how important we think it is to use the excess debt service revenue (that WILL accumulate) to pay off the new debt as quickly as possible.

We also need to concentrate our efforts on finding new blood to run for the two school board seats which become available this fall.  Any volunteers out there?

Suzan Kaye
BCFT