The current school budget meetings and voting in Monmouth would drive a temperance leader to drink. The majority of Monmouth voters who keep voting down the school board’s attempt at raising taxes have but one thing to say as I question many of them. What they say is, the school board just does not seem to get it. In conversations, people cannot believe the school board could ignore such overwhelming negative voter response to the school budget that keeps getting presented.

I have made this statement before and I will make it again: We have champagne education on beer drinkers’ wallets.

We have created a monument to ourselves with only 4,000 residents to pay the bill.

As I watch the very few elderly who dare cross the school board’s firing line to speak at recent meetings, I can’t but feel sad as I watch while their pleas are totally ignored. They speak of high taxes, having to sell their homes and moving away.

Mostly, though, it just makes me angry.

What kind of example are we setting for our children – ignore all others, think only of ourselves, never mind the weak, the have-nots? That’s the lesson currently being taught.

It’s time to embrace economic reality.

Residents must show the children how responsibly we can live – within our means – and take care of our neighbors who are less fortunate and keep them warm this winter.

I say no to a tax increase.

Hugh H. LeMaster, Monmouth