DV Journal

Spring is here, and signs are springing up in Abington.

The signs either oppose or support a plan for the district to borrow $285 million to raze the current middle school and build a new one. Voters will be asked whether to increase their real estate taxes significantly in the May 20 primary, an off-year election with generally light voter turnout.

But the dueling signs may be a sign of more people than usual paying attention, perhaps because of the price-tag.

Owners of a home assessed at $127,000 (the median value) would pay an additional $648 a year in school taxes, bringing their annual total to $5,356.

“If this referendum passes, your school taxes will increase 13.5 percent,” warned Joe Rooney, chair of the Abington Township Rockledge Borough Republican Organization (ATRO). And that’s on top of the 5.28 percent hike the board already plans for 2025, he said. The $250 million bond at 5.5 percent interest over 40 years would cost taxpayers $700 million until it’s paid off.

Joe Rooney has been sounding the alarm over the possible tax increase and questioning whether the Abington School District needs a new middle school when renovating the current school would be more cost-effective.

The number of students in the public schools has been static, hovering around 8,500 pupils for several years now.

In January, the all-Democratic school board voted unanimously to build a new middle school and put the referendum on the ballot.

School Board President Melissa Mowry declined to respond to questions about the debate over the need for the new school. Instead, she directed DVJournal to a website the district set up to tout it. The district says the current 60-year-old middle school has aged and “the challenges of maintaining it and enhancing student learning experiences have increased.” They say the infrastructure is outdated and insufficient for “the evolving needs of students and teaching methods of the future.”

If voters approve the referendum, the new middle school would open for the 2029-2030 school year, with students continuing to go to classes at the old school while the new one is built.

Not so fast, Rooney said.

Rooney, a retired commercial pilot, told DVJournal he’s toured the current middle school and even checked out its roof, which he said does need to be replaced. But the middle school, which the district valued at $102 million in 2022, could be renovated for about $150 million or less, he said. At a board facilities committee meeting in June 2022, officials listed all the items to be fixed or replaced at the middle school and said it would cost $100 million.

By June 2023, the district hired ICS Consulting of Media as its program manager to oversee construction and professional services. Officials paid ICS to do an assessment for $75,000 and began the process of replacing the old middle school. In the contract that Roooney obtained through a right-to-know request, there was a clause that gives ICS 7.5 to 10.5 percent of the total cost for a new school, or $19.9 million to $29.9 million. It was paid $15,000 to help the district with the issue if it went to a referendum. Residents have received slick mailings touting the benefits of a new middle school.

Rooney said he was shocked that the school district would put the fees for ICS into the assessment contract.

“Why wouldn’t that be dealt with separately?” he asked.

The consultant did a survey asking students if they wanted a new school and teachers and administrators. Rooney said most of the teachers and none of the administrators are Abington or Rockledge taxpayers.  And students were asked if they wanted a new school. He said they were not asked about any consequences, such as whether their parents would be unable to take them on vacation because their taxes have increased to pay for that school.

“Here’s the thing they never did,” said Rooney. “They never said what they  would get for $100 million (in repairs to the middle school) or $150 million.”

“The middle school has been completely neglected for 10 years,” he said. It needs new bathroom fixtures, for example, in addition to a roof. The current building is “well-designed and well-built,” but added “it’s been neglected.”

If Abington keeps the old school and renovates it, they don’t have to do “any site work,” he said. “It’s a poured concrete, reinforced steel building with a poured concrete roof.”

Because it is built in modules, renovation work could be done on one module while the others remain in use.

“It has a Little Theater. That’s fine. It’s got three gyms (that need new floors),” he said. There are administrative offices, and “upstairs there’s a beautiful library.” A 30,000-foot addition to the building was built in 1996 and “not even paid off yet.” It increased the size of the school from 270,000 to 301,000 square fee

So, instead of renovating it, “they’re basically going to raze it and throw it (into a landfill),” he said. “That’s what they’re going to do. It’s crazy.”

Rooney lives in Ardsley, and says higher taxes would be a hardship for some of his neighbors.

“I know people who have been laid off,” he said. “They’re struggling financially.”

For an alternate point of view, see: POINT: The Dangers of Legal Marijuana Outweigh the Benefits

Recently, Ohio became the 24th state to legalize “Adult Use” (recreational) marijuana. The people of Ohio did so in a referendum by a landslide, resulting in the majority of the American people now living in states where you cannot be labeled a criminal and possibly go to jail for smoking a plant that makes you feel good.

The new respect for individual freedom in Ohio is a huge step in the right direction but still leaves too many Americans, including those of us living in Pennsylvania, under the antiquated, cruel, irrational and racist policy that has governed us for the past 80 years.

Since 1937, authorities have been waging a “war on drugs” that includes treating the use of marijuana as a matter for the criminal justice system. We have spent billions of dollars investigating, prosecuting, incarcerating and monitoring millions of our fellow citizens who have hurt no one, damaged no property, breached no peace. Their only crime was a personal lifestyle choice, which is frankly none of the government’s business.

According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, in an average year, about 25,000 marijuana arrests are made in Pennsylvania at a cost of $350 million. Of course, that is only the partial cost of prohibition. Our current policy leaves several hundred million dollars on the table in taxes that we do not collect because marijuana is illegal rather than regulated and taxed. Aside from the moral issues involved, we can no longer afford the financial costs of prohibition.

Further, prohibition has done exactly what it did in the case of alcohol in the 1930s. It has created a dangerous, unregulated black market with violent and bloody turf wars that kill many people in our country and elsewhere. It has also decimated whole, mostly poorer communities as it acts as an entry-point into the vortex of the criminal justice system.

As it did with alcohol, legalization and regulation would make marijuana safer. Pennsylvanians no longer would have to buy it on the streets from criminals who may have laced their product with other dangerous substances. People buying legally can know exactly what they are getting and rely on its safety.

Some who oppose legalization claim that cannabis today is so much stronger than it was 30 or 40 years ago. First, this is a bogus claim. Cannabis was universally illegal then, and thus, virtually none of it was tested. So, we don’t know the relative strength of 1970s cannabis compared to today. But regardless, the potential for increased strength is an argument for legalization. People forced to buy cannabis on the street have no way of knowing what they are buying. If you purchase it in a legal dispensary, it comes with a label telling you exactly how much THC is in the product so you can consume it responsibly.

Those who oppose legalization also claim that cannabis is somehow bad for you. I will address that momentarily, but the threshold problem with their argument is that even if they are right, it’s not a good argument for prohibition. Lots of things are, in at least some contexts, bad for you. Tobacco kills 480,000 people in the US each year, and alcohol directly kills about 140,000. The number of people directly killed by marijuana is zero. If you were only to make one of these substances illegal, there’s no logic by which you would choose marijuana.

It’s also important to be skeptical of the studies cited by prohibitionists about the harm of cannabis. Most of these studies either deal with children, and again, it’s called “Adult Use” because it would be illegal for children to use it, or they deal with “chronic use,” meaning people who get high multiple times every day. And yes, that’s not a good idea. But it’s also not a good idea to get drunk multiple times every day, yet we don’t punish responsible drinkers, and we shouldn’t punish responsible marijuana users.

Some argue that cannabis is a “gateway” to harder drugs, but the evidence does not bear that out.  Well, over 90 percent of those who use marijuana never go on to use harder drugs, and the percentage of people who do use hard drugs and had previously used marijuana is no higher than the percentage who had previously tried only beer.

Unlike alcohol, you cannot overdose on marijuana. Unlike alcohol and tobacco, marijuana is not physically addictive. You can develop a psychological dependence on cannabis, but if you quit, you won’t experience potentially fatal delirium tremors like you could with booze.

Studies have shown that people on marijuana are much less likely to behave violently or recklessly than drunk people. Despite all of this, adults can drink and smoke tobacco freely. But if you smoke marijuana, you are a criminal.

This horrific policy must end. People around the nation are realizing that. It is a moral imperative that Pennsylvania wakes up and legalizes marijuana.