$100,000 for a special election from the Temecula Valley
Unified School District budget. Let me tell you what $100,000 means to me.
To raise $100,000 to fund stadium lights at Chaparral High
School I worked on a committee. We met every Wednesday night for a year. From the athletic
director to coaches to parents and students and clubs and groups of every kind on campus,
we worked hard to raise that $100,000. We met with every type of group in the community we
could think of – business groups, service groups, real estate groups, Rotary, PTA,
Chamber of Commerce.
We stood at the curb holding signs every morning for a week, and
sold pancake breakfast tickets. We walked door to door in commercial buildings, dropping
off pamphlets, stating our case as to how the completion of a stadium at CHS would help
all the kids in the valley. We chatted up banks, our own employers, any one we knew that
had resources that could help us from printing to advertising to envelopes. We sent
e-mails to Chamber of Commerce members. We called most of them too.
We put on a dinner/auction. We solicited donations and pounded
pavement selling those seats. Those on the committee worked tirelessly, often putting in
generous amounts of their own money or goods to make it all come together. We organized a
tile sale, manning booths at school events from sport physical day, to sporting events, to
back to school night, that still requires hours of time to manage.
We talked to reporters, we generated stories, we met with district
officials, we met with school officials. We helped with a golf tournament. We sold
Robinson/May coupon books. We sold blankets. We sold candy bars. We stuffed bags and bags
at the Rod Run with fliers. We mailed over a thousand pamphlets. We made hundreds of phone
calls. We ran concessions for NASCAR races.
That’s what it took to raise $100,000 to give to TVUSD to do
something as basic as complete our school. Now Ed Elder, and I do mean Ed Elder and not Ed
Day, turns around and squanders the same amount on his ego and hurt feelings. That’s
a blow.
For those who say you can’t put a price tag on democracy, a
brief reading of Federalist Paper number 10 will remind them it is not a noble cause.
James Madison describes democracy as the ugly business of self-interest run riot, whose
only cure is to pit it against itself. A dog eat dog mentality the Temecula Valley School
Board wants to be the poster child of.
These are the selfish politics of ego and revenge. We have one
public official who abused the trust and efforts of those that worked to put him in
office, by failing to serve out his term, and another who thinks nothing of using public
funds to get his way.