Role of Community Influencers & Using Fiscal Solvency cont…
Roy Roberts also accepted State funds which could not be legally transferred directly to the EAA, to the DPS, then transferred
that money from DPS to Governor Snyder’s school system without the Treasurer of the EAA even knowing about it!
Interestingly, he also closed schools that had been long time polling places, sending the community around in circles to find
their new voting place. It requires no stretching of the imagination that voting declined among registered voters. Precinct
delegates and poll workers report voters complaining about the wild goose chase to find their polling location.
However it came to be that geographical regions with high minority populations in Michigan were targeted, it is a fact that
these are the communities whose elected representation has been replaced by gubernatorial appointments. Closing schools is a
new form of gerrymandering, a happy coincidence to hold down the black vote.
The promise was: Give us money and we will build better schools and improve academic performance. The truth was: Give us
money and we will run you into a deficit and close those schools we remodeled, leave you without a convenient place to vote,
lower your property value and give gangs a place to grow.
However it came to be, the outcome of State authority has NOT been consistent with regard to achieving fiscal solvency.
Based on the Emergency Manager’s latest numbers, which themselves are a joke, they don’t even bother to add up, the State is
sending the district into the point of no return of dissolution as soon as January. An d if the district were to be dissolved,
property owners would still be paying for those schools until 2040.
Instead of higher academic performance, what has been consistent is an increased number of no-bid contracts, more
privatization of services, and more privatization of assets. More no-bid contracts mean greater chance of conflicts of interest
and a less fair playing field in the community.
More privatization means lay-offs of public sector jobs with benefits, equal pay and pensions for lower paying jobs doing the
same work. Perhaps it would not be so bad if it was not for loss of transparency and ethics, civil rights, voting rights – (a
minority majority community which had say in the education of the students), and in some cases, the loss of humanity.
If our hypothesis is correct that the goal is to remove African American elected officials and replace them with appointed
officials who will increase the privatization of public services, then we should be able to test other departments to see if this has
happened under Governor Snyder’s leadership as well. We should also seek to determine if ethical, civil and human rights
violations have taken place.
As School Board Member, Elena Herrada recently said:
“It is difficult to be persuaded that one seeks to provide
a better public service to a person unless they have
sufficient ethics to also care about the human rights of
that person.”
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