D214 expenditures need to be stopped

I attended the District 214 board meeting last month when the $45 million in excess money was discussed. It did not matter what we said, the decision to spend our money was already a done deal.

I cannot believe that we pay 67 percent of our tax bill to the school districts - 23 percent of it to D214 - and residents are not up in arms about these unnecessary projects that were approved just to spend our money.

It is obvious that we have been overtaxed for years (and that isn't being stopped) and even while D214 is keeping 55 percent in operating reserves, there is still a large sum of money that should come back to the residents on our 2016 tax bills.

Enrollment has been flat for five years in our high schools. The additional gyms, pool, artificial turf, music room etc. that have been approved utilizing this money is really an outrage. The projects that were approved are certainly not necessary.

This has got to stop. D214 should not be allowed to go ahead with any of these projects until the real dollar figures attached to each project are available. The communities who are being overtaxed should have a vote on each and every project.

I suggested giving a portion of the money to each high school to be put toward existing programs like registration, driver ed, sports fundraisers and stop charging students to participate in a sport. This allows every student to benefit from the excess money.

The bulk of the money should be refunded to us. This is our money. If we do not stop this now, our tax bill will continue to increase and D214 will continue to take money out of our pockets to start building another excess reserve fund at our expense.

Debbie Papreck

Wheeling