Board Should Resist Pressure

Dear Editor:

Please publish my address to the Sag Harbor School Board:

I would like to address the board this evening and wish the board success in arriving at a solution to Saturday’s scheduled contract negotiations, hopefully, by solving their differences, in the best interest of the entire community. In the last several BOE meetings the board has been pressed “ad nauseam”, by the audience to commit to meeting and staying in session until a solution is reached. A forced demand of this nature is unfair to the board. I do not believe either side can benefit by agreeing to an unlimited time request to reach a solution.

Instead, if the board and the union, committed to a predetermined time limit for the meeting, that would seem to be more practical and respectful to both sides, rather than to pressure these contingents like children to stay in school until a solution is reached.

The Sag Harbor School district is at a pivotal point in its history with the future of its community relations at stake. Any contractual decisions agreed to by the BOE and TASH will affect the budget approval by the community in May. In these trying economic times both sides should consider the potential consequences of their actions.

The commissioner of education of the State of New York in numerous decisions has stated that the board of education can not delegate its statutory responsibility under the education law and civil service, (The Taylor Law) through a voter proposition on teacher compensation.

The legal constraints, of course, prevent the board from opening a direct channel of communication with the public on these critical issues through the vehicle of voter propositions regarding teacher raises and retiree health insurance. however, the board can certainly respond to the will of the electorate through budget hearings, public information and transparency during the negotiation process to the maximum extent appropriate.

 I would like to compliment the board and the administration on the very professional and open presentations regarding the budget, however, I do believe, more public information should be made available on critical issues and these issues need to be addressed in a much more transparent manner.

I would like to see a compilation of all teachers’ salaries, the health insurance for all teachers and the retirement benefit costs of all teachers. The 2.7 percent increase, 27 year guaranteed annual salary increase for all teachers needs to continue to be acknowledged and recognized by the Board of Education as an actual salary increase rather than yielding to TASH’s viewpoint that the step increases be dismissed as inconsequential.

Please, let the public know the quantitative cost of the retirement health plan. It is constantly discussed in terms of the premium contribution paid by the board, or the percentage paid by the teachers. The board wants teachers hired prior to 2000 to pay 15% of the premium cost in retirement, while TASH is unwilling to have teachers hired prior to 2000 pay any amount toward their health insurance costs in retirement. It is rarely mentioned by either side that the cost today approaches $16,000 annually per participant for a family plan (it’s about $10,000 for an individual plan.)

This is why the plan in many circles is called “The Cadillac Plan”!!

When people are not well informed and the communication between and the community and the education is veiled, rather than transparent, rumor and opinion replace facts and mutual trust is lost.

In closing, I would like to urge the board to repel all pressure to have you agree to time requirements demanded by any constituency. This board would, no doubt, rebuff any direct attempt to usurp that same duty and refuse to capitulate to any proposed “heckler’s veto” over rational rules for that fair and sensible conclusion of negotiations.  

Ed Drohan

Noyac

Don’t Forget to Pack Your Bags!

Dear Editor:

At present, the national debt exceeds $13 trillion. I foresee the debt being at about $20 trillion by 2016, and $30 trillion by 2020. In short, the government is broke and has been broke for many years now, and with the fixed expenditures of the USA, our government will, I regret to say, go out of business by 2020.

How could this be! Well, ask yourself the following question: “Where does the sky end?” This question cannot be answered by the human brain. Even if you said that the sky ends, 150 million, trillion miles away, then what’s behind that. Is there a fence that says “here is where the sky ends?” I don’t think so. In fact, our inability to answer the question only makes our debt problem more of a problem. Clearly, if all 308 million men, women and children living in America today sought to eliminate the debt, then each of us would have to put up more than $40,000. Most people live from paycheck to paycheck, and the thought that every person in America, even babies, could put up $40,000 is wishful thinking.

The first of the baby boomers are about to collect Social Security and Medicare benefits. In ten years, millions of baby boomers are going to put an inconceivable burden on our nation’s health, and the President and Congress won’t be able to engage in discretionary spending. Everybody should see the writing on the walls, insofar as our annual deficits and national debt are concerned. Furthermore, more and more of our representatives in the House and Senate are fed up, and choosing not to run for reelection. Recently, I learned that Senator Evan Bigh from Indiana, who has served his state well in the higher body for 12 years, stated that he loved America but that he “hated Congress.”

In short, it’s about time, if you can, to pack your bags with gold and silver American coins and go to another country; for here, in our beloved America, the business analysts and commentators are going to reveal to all of us that the paper money in our purses and wallets are if not virtually worthless, then in fact worthless. So what should we do? Speaking personally, for the past 18 months, I have not been buying stocks or bonds, but have instead been buying gold and silver bullion coins that I also take possession of. I anticipate a day when some financier who has a $4 million stock and bond portfolio, will within a week see his/her portfolio shrink by about 80%. I see this individual on the telephone with his/her stock and bond broker begging him/her to get him/her out of the market, and hopefully salvage $1 million. Of course, the problem with that scenario will be what s/he will do with the $1 million in cash after s/he liquidates his/her portfolio into cash which I, and others, truly believe will be worthless.

Everyone, in my view, should, if they can, buy gold and silver American coins and take possession of same. When the markets collapses as earlier stated herein, I suspect that the fair market value of a one ounce gold American coin to be worth, at least, $7,500. Therefore, at best the financier might be able to take his $1 million in paper money and buy as many gold and silver coins as s/he can.

As for me and my family, my plan, when reality sets in, is to go to a local airport in the Hamptons, and try to get a commercial aircraft pilot operating a private jet who would be willing to fly me, my wife and my two children to my wife’s homeland of Costa Rica not for dollars, but for three ounces of gold coins paid to the pilot. There, my wife, has a 40 acre tract of land. Assuming that we can get a commercial private pilot to fly us out of the country, we will hopefully leave America for good. Accordingly, contact a precious metal dealer, and if you can, buy gold and silver coins, pack your bags with these coins and regrettably get the hell out of here.

President Thomas Jefferson, that late, great American and one of the founding fathers of our nation said words to the effect that when the government fails to work anymore, create a new government. Like all other nations through history, no nation has lasted forever. America is and was an experiment and it hurts deep down in my soul that we’re coming to the end of this wonderful and glorious experiment. To those who are my friends and acquaintances, take care and know that when I leave this nation with my family, I take absolutely no joy in the fact that both I and mine, might be the few who escape the social and civil unrest that will befall America when the end comes. My prayers are for me, mine and for you as well!

So long!

Fred Fisher, Esq.

Southampton

Now What?

Dear Bryan,

The fundamental question of these times is, “Now that government hath giveth, how does it taketh away?” I said it last week and I am saying it again because it is the fundamental question. The peoples’ reply will either preserve America’s freedom or it will relegate our divinely inspired experiment in self-governance to the ash heap of history as we become nothing more than a European-style socialist society.

Greece is in deep economic trouble because of its deficits and debt. It is trying to “taketh away” entitlements that it had “giveth” over the years. But the people of Greece have gotten used to their “cradle to grave” care, so they are holding national strikes and protests as the government seeks to put the genie back in the bottle.

If we keep adding entitlements like socialized, nationalized health care then our future is foretold. We will need no crystal ball. We will become Greece. A bankrupt nation, fair reader, is a nation beholden to its creditors, not to its creators we like to call, “the sons of liberty.”

Bill Jones

Hampton Bays

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