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I pay Warwick taxes as both a Warwick homeowner and as the owner of a Warwick office building. If the City Council is not properly providing funding to the schools, that it a political problem that can be corrected by interested voters putting political pressure on the mayor and city counselors. it appears that the Mayor has made the political calculation that there is no significant political cost to refusing to provided needed resources to high school-age Warwick residents. For example, in 2006 Warwick voters passed a bond referendum authorizing Warwick to renovate athletic fields, especially those at Mickey Stevens. They are used mostly by high school-age students. Those fields are embarrassing and hurt the reputation of our City; not only are they located at the smelly dump but they are also in perpetual disrepair. The mayor refused to use the bonds to renovate those fields; he cited interest costs as the reason. Even though he ignored the wishes of the voters he was re-elected with massive majorities in the last two elections; I believe that he received more than 80% of the vote in 2012. It seems that his strategy is to keep residential property taxes relatively low, keep small business taxes through office building real estate taxes high because there is not enough small business owners in the city to make a political difference in an election, sneak in high fees on sewer and water because, until recently, voters did not complain about those as much as they would a property tax increase, level fund the schools, generate a surplus, and, as a result, claim to be good fiscal manager. This cynical strategy seems to work for him and the City Council. The City is declining, especially as a place for children to live, during the time that he has been mayor but he keeps on rolling to victory after victory. He seems to be mayor for life, if that what he wants. There needs to voter pressure for this not to continue. Those that organized to stop the unnecessary school consolidation should also focus on pushing the mayor and the city council to properly fund our schools with the real threat of running viable candidates against them if they ignore the needs of our school-age Warwick residents. If high school run best with between 600 to 900 students, we should not consolidate our high school that have now between 910-990 students because we do not believe our city leaders will provide proper funding for them.

From: Committee tables school plan

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