ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” story. It is an editorial by the editor.
There are two very differen
t things going on right now in two local school districts. One is a visionary, forward-looking policy decision in Martin. The other is continuation of a tired old practice in Wayland.
First the good news.
The Martin Board of Education earlier this month agreed to a contract that will enable installation of solar panels on the roofs the school buildings. Board members and Supt. David Harnish should be commended for passing an energy policy that takes the district out of sad sack dependence on oil and fossil fuels and instead boldly moving forward into the 21st century. Furthermore, the schools get ownership after 20 years.
The time has come for American to lose its painful and deadly addiction to oil. Our fossil fuel habit has resulted in very costly and immoral wars in the Middle East and I believe strongly it has contributed to climate change.
We’ve been warned that the last two months of the summer of ’16 were the warmest on record worldwide. We also have been warned almost every evening on the Nightly News, which nearly always has some kind of story about weird and ugly weather.
The vast majority of scientists agree that climate change is happening and it’s our fault and we need to do something about it.
Getting off fossil fuels and moving toward cleaner energy is not just installing solar panels, though it’s a terrific start. Countries like Germany and Sweden have demonstrated excellent results.
Kudos to Martin for its courage to move past the abyss our reliance on oil has caused.
Meanwhile, in Wayland, the school district is having a polling company conduct a telephone survey about the potential bond issue in May 2017. I received one such call last Friday and found the survey to be as tedious and cumbersome as a speech by John Tuinstra.
There were far too many questions and too much required of Joe Citizen. Most people I’ve spoken with and heard from already have expressed irritation with these calls, as if they are about one level above telemarketing.
In these modern, now a-go-go days, the telephone is becoming more and more a source of annoyance. A phone call interrupts a person’s day and privacy. I myself prefer to send people e-mails so they can respond when they wish.
I call people only when I have to or in cases of emergency. I learned long ago that I could get my work done much more quickly if I didn’t have to answer irrelevant telephone calls that I could have dealt with later that day.
Phone polling is doing absolutely nothing to further the cause of passing the bond request. If anything, it is helping to ensure its doom from a public relations standpoint.
Telephones are yesterday’s tools. I urge Wayland schools resolutely to ditch the tedious and irritating phone surveys and come up with another way to communicate with citizens. E-mail would be one option. There must be others.
I’ve already gone on record as supporting the bond proposal next spring, but I fear it will go down in flames unless a course correction is made.
I received this phone call on Sunday afternoon, which is an irritation to me in and of itself. I just received my second phone call at about 7:45, a few minutes ago. Again, I have just gotten home from work, it is “my time”, not your time. I told the young man that I was not shy, and if I felt something needed my opinion, I would have no problem voicing it without the need of a phone call survey. He obviously misinterpreted what I said to him, so he called back. Not a good idea.
I hope they are not paying out a lot for this survey!! I received a call on Sunday and out of boredom I listened. What a waste of time and money.
300 survey respondents.
$19,000
I received my survey call on Saturday afternoon. It was long but the caller explained that before beginning. She was very pleasant and explained the need for the repetitive questions. I would much rather that the citizens planning team and school board know the feelings of a sample of the community before putting together a long-term plan. This is not a simple issue and thoughtfulness is important.
You could cover the whole southwest and erect wind turbines (realize all the birds that are killed yearly migrating and being killed by the blades! – where is the Audubon Society?) all over the Midwest and you’d never generate enough electricity to power the U.S. The amount of power needed in the U.S. is greater than what those sources combined could or ever will generate. We need fossil fuels/atomic/wind/solar/hydro together to meet the demands of the American businesses/consumers.
The miniscule amount of energy solar panels generate overall is insignificant – electricity will still have to be purchased both during and after sunny days by Martin schools to operate everything demanding electricity to operate. The cost/benefit analysis will never show a large savings. There will be savings, but not enough to cover initial costs and maintenance in a reasonable timeframe.
Get real folks, fossil fuels are here to stay for a while longer until research and technology improve existing and new alternatives of energy generation. The actions by the Obama administration of closing coal fired electrical plants are for show only, we will pay the consequences later with higher and higher power bills.