You Have an Opportunity to Improve Our Community.

Our community’s school system has submitted a bond request that you’ll have an opportunity to vote on May 6.

 Administrators and a couple of school board members presented what Midland Public Schools is requesting at our Rotary Club meeting recently. I was impressed with their thought process behind the bond proposal and the depth with which they’ve considered the value that will be provided to ALL the members of our community.

Let me explain what I mean by “value that will be provided to ALL the members of our community.” When our oldest son was 10 years old, he had the privilege of giving a speech at a Junior Achievement Gala that was honoring local business leaders. He caught the audience off guard when he began to chant “Taxes, Taxes they’re OK, Taxes help us every day!” He followed that up with “You probably spend more time thinking about how much taxes COST you rather than how much taxes PROVIDE you, but when a Junior Achievement Volunteer came into our classroom, he explained that taxes had provided the building we were being educated in, the teachers that taught us every day, the buses that brought us to school, and the roads and sidewalks that we used to safely get to school and return home.”

                  Listening to him that night, I realized I was guilty of that mistake, too. Just mentioning the word tax is enough to increase my blood pressure and anxiety. Then, he showed me a different perspective - one loaded with hope for a better future for ALL of our community. He forced me to re-think how I felt about the community and the school system that my own education was founded on, and the school system that was providing the education for our four sons that would be so critically important in determining the quality of their future life.

                  I realized that I had never shown appreciation for the people who paid the taxes that provided me with my K-12 education and that of our sons. If you’ve ever paid property taxes, or if you’ve paid rent to a landlord who paid property taxes …  THANK YOU! You’ve made a difference in tens of thousands of people’s lives. You’ve helped support the education of the people who take care of you when you’re in the hospital, that serve you at the gas station, restaurant, retail store, grocery, bank and credit union. You supported the people who repair your plumbing, furnace, and air conditioner. The people who paint your home, mow your lawn, shovel your driveway, and repair your vehicles.

                  You helped support teachers, city and county workers, law enforcement and fire fighters, non-profit workers, and community support services. These are the people who have had a direct impact on some aspect of your life every day. They’re the ones you supported when you passed previous bond requests and based on the quality of education you’ve supported, the return on your investment has been overwhelming successful.

                  The people that impact your daily life benefitted from the quality of the school system and its K-12 foundational experience. While I have supported all school bond proposals since I’ve been able to vote, I’ve never thought about the “WHY,” or the impact my vote had on my community.

                  WHAT’S THE REAL QUESTION HERE? On May 6, you’re voting your deepest feelings about what you want our community to be. Think about it. Don’t you want the finest medical care available here in our community? If the answer is yes, how are we supposed to attract the best health care workers to Midland if we’re not offering their kids a great education? How are the first-class companies in our community supposed to attract the “best and brightest” if we’re not offering the very best school system around?

                  So, here’s my really positive perspective on all of this and why I’m encouraging you to take the time to support this bond proposal on May 6. I recently heard the statement “SOMETHING SPECIAL HAPPENS WHEN YOU GO FROM BEING A PAYER TO BEING A GIVER” on a vlog about Hope College’s Hope Forward Program. Basically, this program allows a student to get a degree without paying any tuition if they’ll agree to make donations after getting their degree and getting established financially in life. It’s a pay-it-forward program that helps alleviate the necessity of student loans.

                  Think of your own K-12 education. Taxpayers supporting bonds, just like the current one proposed, is what allowed your K-12 education to be free to you. Now you have an opportunity to pay-it-forward by voting to support your community’s effort to be the very best it can be when it comes to educating the students that will impact our future. Former students are funding the education of today’s students with the anticipation that someday they will be funding someone else’s. I love this perspective and am beginning to focus on all the areas of my life that I can go from being a payer to being a giver. Why? Because when I make that shift in my mind, SOMETHING SPECIAL HAPPENS.

                  As a family who’s always lived by a strict budget, paying for something doesn’t provide great joy, but giving something sure does. My hope is that you’ll be supportive of any effort that makes this a better community for everyone. Why? Because, Hey…I believe in YOU! GiddyUp!