In your March 11 edition, a citizen-led group calling itself QV Strong addressed your local readers. The group presented themselves as proponents for building a new high school, to be constructed on a hilltop overlooking Leetsdale and Edgeworth. In laying out their case, the group put forth a number of opinions, some of which I support and others I question.
But one assertion jarred me: their out-of-hand dismissal of holding a citizens’ referendum on the proposed construction. In dismissing the idea of a referendum, QV Strong evidenced their position by referencing Commonwealth law, asserting that “Referendums cannot be used to approve or disapprove a district’s planning or construction project.”
The group went on to add that “Pennsylvania law is very clear: school districts only hold referendums when they seek to except certain debt threshold and raise taxes above the Act I index.”
Their assertion is wrong, however, both in fact and context. I draw this conclusion after studying the Commonwealth’s Public School Code which, among other things, addresses referendums. My reading revealed that the code in no way precludes referendums.
What the code does do is define when referendums are required, with an eye toward slowing things down when construction costs become extraordinary. Moreover, the tone of the Commonwealth’s Code far from discourages referendums. Rather, the code encourages citizen oversight across the board, as means for preventing school districts from tip-toeing around citizen concerns.
This being the case, our QV School Board has either misread the code or believes that our citizens are indifferent to project costs. And the costs are considerable … financial ($100 million-plus), social (no more walking to school) and environmental (another Walmart landslide?). Given such costs, I believe it timely that the QV School board initiate a referendum, do it enthusiastically and do it now. The results may well support their hilltop initiative. But at the least, a well-crafted referendum would provide the board with community input as to how best to handle our deteriorating high school facility.
Please encourage your school board representative to support such a referendum. Better yet, the QV School Board could initiate a referendum without our prompting.
Bud Smith
Sewickley
