"It has large offices, a dining room, tiled showers, upscale furniture and decorations, and even remote-controlled curtains in one lounge area."
Recent revelations that the Clark County School District, trying to get out from under $930,000 in annual office-lease costs, got a reasonably good deal on a well-appointed building, have outraged the Valley.
The outrage is not directed at the building's apparently sensible $14.5 million price tag—which has occasioned such comments as, "Carlos, who's your realtor?"—but at its Gatsbyesque interiors, which, as concerned taxpayers everywhere know, send out entirely the wrong message. When our public servants stop living like servants, something has gone deeply, deeply awry.
This, however, is nothing new here in the Champagne & Croissants School District, as we recently found out when our exclusive undercover report revealed the following conditions at the old administration building on Flamingo Road:
• Pricey computers that feature the new "desktop-type" environment called "Windows."
• Support personnel with desktop candy bowls overflowing with such popular American chocolates as "Mr. Goodbar" and "Krackle."
• "Coolers" equipped with large bottles of European-style "filtered" water.
We also found that certain mid-level managers were provided, at company expense, modern Swingline staplers when conventional paper clips would have done perfectly well. Moreover, we found, adjacent to the building, a large expanse of asphalt, purchased at public expense, upon which district personnel were permitted to "park" their "cars."
In an age when many children do not have automobiles of their own, what does it say that we not only pay school-district bureaucrats enough money to purchase these "cars," but also pay for precious land, at outrageous 1964 prices, for them to park these machines?
Needless to say, this is an outrage, one among many outrages we are feeling for the moment. Such as: Why do you have such nice shoes? Do you really make enough money to be wearing those shoes? Are you, by any chance, a public employee? If so, is it possible that I am paying you to wear those nice shoes?
Rest assured, my tax-dollar-sucking friend, if I had wanted to pay for such shoes, I would have bought them for myself. Actually, I did buy them for myself. I have shoes just like your shoes. But that doesn't mean you have any right to have shoes just like mine. Not on my dime, buddy.
I once had a teacher friend. Note that I say "once," because that teacher is no friend of mine anymore. Once, this "friend," in full knowledge that it is I, the 28-percent-bracket taxpayer, who pays the bulk of his salary for his posh three-quarters-of-a-year job, invited me over to his house. At the time I thought "house" was simply a bit of politesse, a euphemism for "living quarters" or "barracks," but what did I find when I arrived but an actual, honest-to-goodness "house," not even a town house, but a fully detached home with a two-car (!) garage and a 200- square-foot back yard with natural sod.
I went into the house and, because I have a little culture, a little tact, I refrained from expressing my shock. Until, that is, I asked to use the restroom. I say "restroom," not "bathroom" because, knowing that this was a teacher, feeding at the public trough, I assumed there would be no "bath." As a matter of fact, I assumed that I would be directed down the street to the neighborhood latrine. But no! What do I find? An attached bathroom, complete with not only a bath, but a shower as well. Unable to contain my curiosity, I peeked into the shower and I found—good Lord, what I found!—not a simple floor of sand or unfinished wood plank, but TILE! A tiled shower! What's next? Upscale furniture?
Candy in the office, staples in the drawer, turf in the yard. Take note, and remember all this the next time they cry about class size.
And when they try to reach into your pocket with one of their "bond issues," you just tell them to sell a square of shower tile.
Tell them to sell it for a bundle.
Tell them to buy their own damn bond.