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Thieves stole a $3,500 stereo and navigation system from a vehicle parked on Harbor View Lane Oct. 26. Someone stole a $1,300 laptop from a vehicle parked on Oakcrest Drive Oct. 26. Thieves broke into a home on Germaine Lane Oct. 25 and stole $3,000 of items, including a laptop, some jewelry and an iPod. I am a fifth-grade teacher at Brookside Elementary, Oak Park's oldest school. Our computer lab and library are small, technologically substandard carved-out spaces that were not part of the original school design. Simply put, our facilities are outdated. Furthermore, our buildings do not meet modern earthquake standards, which should be an alarming concern for everyone. Two major earthquakes have occurred since Brookside was built and building codes have undergone two stringent revision. H6 will address these concerns. The amount of work needed to take Brookside from the 1960s to the 21st century is beyond the scope of a little "TLC." Voting yes on H6 will not raise your taxes. You will pay the same tax rate that you have paid since the schools were built. To me, H6 seems like a sound investment. Our schools are among the best in the state and the nation. Each of our schools has been recognized for its excellence. To let Oak Park's finest resource fall into disrepair would not be consistent with the forward thinking that had characterized this community for so long. Please vote yes on H6. Jay Greenlinger Newbury Park As students in the Oak Park Unified School District, we spend most of our weeks at Medea Creek Middle School. That's seven hours a day, five days a weeks. There is no air conditioning in the gyms or locker rooms. After doing heart work or running a mile, the last thing you want to do is go into a hot, smelly, crowded locker room. The packed dances are held in the hot gym where you dance for two hours straight and after that you feel like there is no place hotter or smellier than that. When it rains, sometimes you get water dripping on your head. If you've spent a lot of time on your hair that morning you don't want a wet head. What is really amazing to us is that there aren't even enough lockers at the high school. A lot of kids have to carry around all their stuff wherever they go. One of us has a big sister who says there is hardly any place to eat lunch, and the lines are really long at the high school and bathrooms are gross. H6 has stuff to fix the lunch area, fix the kitchens so the lines could be shorter and to redo the bathrooms. Please vote yes on H6 because you believe in helping our sisters, brother and us and all the kids in OPUSD. Michelle Smolarski, Devyn Gortner Oak Park In the 1970s, as today, there were many people in Oak Park who either had no children or their children were grown and had left home. These people voted with us to form a new school district and tax themselves, not for personal gain they expected to reap from it but because it was the right thing to do. Just as these people thought about it and decided to form a school district many today have decided to endorse measure H6. The list of endorsements for Oak Park's school facilities bond measure H6 is impressive: the Sheriffs Association, the Teachers Association, the Community Foundation of Oak Park, the Democratic Central Committee of Ventura County, the Democratic Club of Conejo Valley, the Oak Park Municipal Advisory Council and the Sierra Club to name just half of the organizations supporting H6. I ask all Oak Park voters to please be responsible and study the facts and you will make the right decision to support repair, replacement and modernization of our schools with a Yes vote on H6. Jan Iceland Oak Park All Oak Park children, both those in our schools now and the next generation, should not continue to spend their days in dilapidated buildings, with poor or nonexistent air conditioning, horrible bathrooms, buildings with cracked foundations, ancient plumbing and electrical systems, sitting under roofs that leak and more. It's upsetting that some people quickly pass judgment without really doing their homework. I saw a flier that said H6 has frivolous things such as "solar technology." Solar panels will save $524,000 on the schools' annual electrical bills alone. There is nothing frivolous about earthquake and fire safety issues. Please don't be fooled by rumors about waste. Our schools, our children, and the future of our beloved Oak Park deserve your yes vote on H6. Liz Kramer Oak Park Have you seen the list of H6 projects and the explanation for them? The opposition has been critical about certain H6 projects such as solar technology, landscaping, kitchen upgrades and artificial turf and visitors' bleachers at the high school. On the website you can see that the solar technology saves the district 50 percent annually on their electric bills and is projected to pay for itself in under seven years. The $900,000 for landscaping is for droughttolerant and lowmaintenance plants that save money on irrigation, the district's No. 2 utility expense. The kitchen upgrades give stoves to two of the elementary schools. Without stoves the schools have kitchens that can only heat and serve highly-processed food. At the high school, the kitchen upgrade is intended to shorten long lunch lines. Part of the high school kitchen upgrade is to provide much-needed eating areas for the students (lunch tables and shelter). Artificial turf is common at many local high schools and is a cost saving measure. It doesn't require watering, maintenance or striping and results in less injuries. The visitors' bleachers were removed last year due to their dangerous condition and need to be replaced. I don't see how any of these are unreasonable items. Oak Park schools can be fixed without an increase in the taxes we pay every year. When you learn the facts you, too, will see H6 makes perfect sense. Natalie Friedman Oak Park Walk through any Oak Park campus and you will see classroom clusters that look like a cross between temporary military barracks and a mobile home park. Major outdoor play and communal areas lack shade trees or any aesthetic landscaping. Auditoriums cannot accommodate student functions, plays or events. Libraries are cramped and claustrophobic. Science and computer labs have not kept up with rapidlyevolving technology and training equipment. Even common sense facilities maintenance is neglected. H6 is not a frivolous spending orgy but establishes a fund that restores pride in Oak Park schools and builds infrastructure that will benefit our children for decades. The H6 longterm funding measure costs a couple hundred dollars annually as part of our taxdeductible property tax bill. Taxes will not rise since H6 will only tag the ex piration of the bond funding that created our schools. Much benefit will effectively be free since passage qualifies Oak Park to federal and state matching funds. Your vote yes on H6 equates to an investment in your community, your children and your future home appreciation. Eric Tescher Oak Park We have schools that are old and in need of repairs. Brookside is 40 years old and the classrooms, the library and the multipurpose room have not had any major renovations. What would your house look like 40 years from now without any significant repairs or renovations? We also need to update structures to bring them up to current earthquake standards. My children, your children, your community's children, deserve to go to school in safe and modern classrooms. It is our responsibility to make sure that they do. Yes, we pay more in property taxes. L.A. Unified residents pay $107 per $100,000 of assessed property value. Do you really think that our paying $135 per 100,000 of assessed value is too much to ask to get the quality of education our children get here? Continue to show our children that we care about their future. Invest in their future by voting yes on H6 on Nov. 7. Vicki Leung Oak Park Since the school district was built nearly 30 years ago, we have not passed a bond measure for any repairs. Measure H6 funds a scaled back plan for necessary school facility repairs. There are no other sources of funding for the critical major repairs to our schools. Measure H6 does not increase tax rates; it extends our current tax rate. I trust the plans put forth by the Facilities Planning Committee and School Board. I also trust in the oversight committee and annual audits process to ensure the integrity of the repair and renovation program. I will be voting "yes" on Measure H6 on Nov. 7. Linda Dahl Oak Park Police RSS feed |
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