We can avoid our taxes being raised if the board would cut wasteful spending from its billion-dollar annual budget, such as the millions they spend building extravagant school buildings instead of standard buildings. This wasteful spending needs to be cut!    

 

Wasteful Spending on Extravagant School Buildings:

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A school building should be functional, safe, comfortable, and clean, and have the classrooms and spaces that support educating students. That is a standard school building. Students and teachers do not need their school to have a 4-story glass entryway or a 4-story open atrium in order to learn and thrive. As I see these extravagant schools being built or renovated to look like crystal palaces, it makes my wallet hurt because I know that these extravagant buildings not only cost millions more to build, but also cost millions more to heat and cool and maintain. But a school building does not need to be extravagant for teachers to teach and for students to learn, because there simply is no correlation between extra money spent on extravagant school buildings and student success. This is because school buildings don't teach and inspire students - great teachers do! And great teachers who teach in standard school buildings are just as successful at teaching students as great teachers who teach students in extravagant school buildings. 

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But for some reason, Alpine School Board has gotten in the habit of building extravagant new school buildings, and adding extravagant additions to older school buildings, that cost much more of our hard-earned tax dollars to build, and much more to operate and maintain, than a standard school building. Which would be fine if money grew on trees. But it doesn't! Those are OUR hard-earned tax dollars being wasted! I believe that building extravagant school buildings is an ego thing, but does nothing to improve student success over a standard school building.

 

And Mark Clement may be the biggest offender. He has repeatedly brought up the fact that, in his capacity on the PG High Community Council, he was responsible for the extravagant addition built onto the front of Pleasant Grove High a few years ago. By his own admission, the board originally had plans to expand PG High by building some standard classrooms on the back of the school. But Mark pushed the Board to scrap that reasonable plan, and to instead build an extravagant addition on the front of the building, which came with an enormous price tag for our hard-earned tax dollars, both in initial construction costs, as well as in ongoing operating and maintenance costs. 

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In 2016, Mark attended an election debate at PG High and stated: "Initially we were going to build a classroom wing on the back of the school, and as a community council, we went around and looked at a bunch of other schools, and we all decided that we came up with a vision that we don’t just want more classrooms – we want students to be proud of their school. We want students to come and feel that kind of Viking pride that we want them to have." (See 5:28 to 5:56 of the 2016 debate on YouTube). Four years later, in another debate at PG High for the 2020 election, Mark said that he wanted "the front of the school to be something the students can be proud of." (See 8:55 to 9:27 of the 2020 debate on Facebook). 

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The thing that is most apparent to me in watching Mark make these statements is that he doesn't seem to understand what students care about, and he doesn't seem to understand what teachers care about. And he definitely doesn't seem to understand what taxpayers care about.

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Because kids in school care most about their friends and their activities (like sports, clubs, music, and art, which I'm all for, within reason) and their teachers, and the resources their teachers have to teach.  I dare say that no student who attended PG High before the extravagant addition was lacking in Viking pride. Kids don't have pride in their school only if it has extravagant architecture. Instead, kids have pride in their school because of their friends and activities and teachers, regardless of whether it has extravagant architecture. Kids generally don't care about extravagant architecture. Only adults do.

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And only certain adults do.

 

Take adult teachers, for example. Suppose a teacher was presented with two options: 

1. spend millions of extra dollars on the school building where you teach to make it look more extravagant, or 

2. build a standard school building, and take those millions of extra dollars and spend them on compensating you (the teacher) more fairly and providing you with more of the resources that you need to teach your students.

I suspect that most, if not all, of the teachers employed by Alpine School District would rather the board would go with option 2. 

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Or take adult voters.  Based on the vote in November 2022 where 53% of voters said 'No' to the $595 million bond, and the Truth in Taxation Hearing in August 2023 where 86% of speakers were against a tax rate increase, I also suspect that a majority of adult voters in Alpine School District would also choose option 2.

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But unfortunately, the adults on Alpine School Board, perhaps most of all Mark Clement, don't seem to have a problem wasting our hard-earned tax dollars on extravagant school buildings. This has got to stop! 

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MY PROMISE - If elected, I will never vote for an extravagant school building or addition, but would instead only vote for standard school buildings and additions. 

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Wasteful Spending on Excessive Board Member Compensation:

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In addition to extravagant school buildings, a quick glance at the '23-'24 budget approved by the board reveals other areas where the board could immediately cut wasteful spending.

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One example of wasteful spending in the budget is the recent drastic increases in board member compensation that the board members unanimously voted for themselves. Being a board member is not a full-time or even a part-time job. Instead, the board only meets on average a couple of evenings per month. (See, for example, the Board Minutes from 2023, where the board only met a total of 24 times). Mark has been on Alpine School Board for 10 years. He was originally on the board for 2 years in 2011-2012, but lost his reelection bid in 2012. He then ran again and won in 2016 and 2020, thus being on the board for the last 8 years (2017-2024). In 2017 (the first year I can find a public record of his compensation), Mark was compensated with $3240 of our tax dollars. But his annual compensation has steadily crept upwards to last year (2023) when his compensation reached $14,808 of our hard-earned tax dollars. (See Transparent Utah, searching for 'Mark Clement'). That's a 457% increase! And for those of you keeping score at home, Mark was compensated $617 of our tax dollars for every one of the 24 evenings he met with the board last year. I get that evening meetings can be brutal. But I bet getting paid $617 per meeting really took the edge off! And why did Mark's compensation increase so drastically over 7 years? Well, the board simply voted themselves big pay raises. For example, in 2021, Mark and the rest of the board unanimously voted themselves a pay raise, which doubled their base wages! (See Lehi Free Press article, see also board's July 13, 2021 meeting minutes, pages 6-7). Further, there have been big increases every year in the benefits board members give themselves on top of their wages. Thus, over the course of 7 years, Mark and the other board members' votes resulted in a drastic 457% increase in his annual compensation for 'serving' on the school board! Other board members also have similar drastic increases in annual compensation over that same time period. Why the drastic increases? Did something change between the work required in 2017 and the work required in 2023 to justify a 457% increase? Well, a couple of things did change. First, enrollment in the school district did increase by 7% in those 7 years, so maybe an increase in compensation of 7% might make sense, if we can assume (which I'm not sure we can) that increased enrollment results in increased work for the board. (See enrollment numbers on page 7 of the board's Enrollment Document). Also, inflation did go up 26% over those 7 years, so another 26% increase might make sense. (See 01/2017 to 12/23 at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator). But, even if we accept a 33% increase (7% for enrollment increases and 26% for inflation), what about the other 424% of Mark's 457% increase in compensation? Why has the board voted themselves such a drastic increase in their own compensation? How is this not a waste of our hard-earned tax dollars? I personally think it is the fox guarding the hen house when elected officials vote themselves a pay raise with our tax dollars like Mark and the other board members did in July 2021. If pay for an elected office ever needs to be raised, there ought to be a law that prevents the pay raise from taking effect until after the next person is elected to that office. 

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MY PROMISE - If elected, I will refuse any compensation for serving on the board, or if compensation is required, I will pay taxes and tithing on the compensation and then donate the rest back to the school district. I'm not looking to enrich myself or anybody else by serving on the board (which is why I also refuse to accept any donations to my campaign for a seat on the board). I will also never vote to increase board member compensation, and will vote to repeal the compensation increases the board has voted for themselves over the past few years and thus roll back board compensation to previous more reasonable levels.