Posted 4/18/01 Writer says ënoí to NB Schools referendum To the editor: I urge people to vote NO for the referendum. According to the superintendent, the referendum will be for 20 years. That is for a new elementary school as well as extra land we may need in the future. He said we should need a new middle school in about 5 years. How are we going to pay for that. We have seniors who are on a fixed income who donít have that kind of money to lay out. We will be paying for a new firehouse on next yearís property tax. Now this. How much do they think we can afford. Do we need to get second jobs just to pay for the new taxes. I do not say that we donít need a new school, however the school board should have put this on the ballet in November. How could the School Board not have known that there would have been an increase of children with all the building going on? Why all of a sudden are they asking for money when they could have started to look at the problem before. I feel that buying land that we donít need now, as well as putting more money into the Main Street School just for kindergarten and district officeís is stupid. Why would we put good money into a building which the architect said part of the building is no good. I feel there are still options we can look at such as year round schooling which would be cheaper. Studies have shown that children retain more when there is a short break such as two or three weeks instead of the whole summer. In short I feel the School Board can come with other options which would not cause financial hard ships for its citizens. We are paying too much in property tax if this goes through. Enough is enough. Theresa J. Furman North Branch ©Post Review