I trust I’m not the only taxpayer feeling a sense of outrage at the new pay package the RB board has recently lavished on Assistant Principal Tim Scanlon. Mr. Scanlon is 53 years old and seeks to retire in a little over three years when he turns 57.
To aid him in this pursuit we have agreed as taxpayers, per our elected school board, to increase his salary from the current amount of roughly $129,000 per year to over $161,000.
This boost in pay over the last four years of his career will allow him to receive a commensurately larger pension benefit. Oh yes, I almost forgot, because he has worked in the public school system for less than 20 years and is not in the union, we have agreed to kick in whatever it takes to make him eligible for full pension benefits under the Teachers Retirement System.
What are you and the board thinking, Mr. Herbst? Don’t you read the newspapers? Aren’t you aware that unemployment is over 8 percent and climbing? Millions of people are losing their jobs; wages are being frozen or rolled back.
The value of your home, the bedrock on which all of your benevolence rests, has declined by anywhere from 25 to 40 percent. The crushing weight of real estate taxes and health care expenses are crippling the American economy.
You claim it is only fair. How magnanimous. Fair to whom? Not to me or the thousands of other taxpayers who have to foot the bill so Mr. Scanlon can be paid to do nothing for the next 30 years of his life.
Fair relative to what the teachers union would provide him? I have news for you Mr. Herbst; the teachers union is not fair. It is an utterly self-serving organization designed to feather the nests of its members.
Like some malevolent beast, it gobbles up an increasing amount of our tax dollars, extorting us through referendum, threatening to do away with the marching band and the football team if we don’t pay up. And what do we receive in return for our generosity? The assurance that Mr. Scanlon will “meet his performance goals,” whatever that means.
The system at its core is corrupt and needs to be radically altered. The teachers’ salaries need to be rolled back, their pension benefits need to be funded via defined contribution and they need to start paying their fair share for health care insurance.
Anyone running for the school board should grasp this and possess the fortitude to achieve it.
William H. Anderson Jr.
Riverside