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The saturation of the Bee with letters to the editor about the LPOSD levy vote warrants a look at who’s doing the writing.

Turns out that the majority are current and former school employees and their family members, current and former school board members, and some students, not all of whom have lived here during the years when supplemental levy increases continued to pile upon a financially struggling community; and at least one writer, I noticed, even lives out of state. It seems to me that it takes a special audacity to ask for a tax increase to be imposed on a community in which you haven’t carried that increased tax burden for years while you lived elsewhere or aren’t even living here now.

The second aspect discernible in pro-levy letters is how many are based on emotion, nostalgia, tout “experiential learning” and electives as a must-have, but show a complete disregard for costs because it’s all “for the children. This emphasis is also noticeable in the many transparently-LPOSD-friendly articles which have been appearing on the front page of the Bee for weeks now.

Actually, this levy, even more than all previous ones, is for the adults, namely school district employees. Their salaries constitute the bulk of the levy, 82 percent (10 years ago it was 20 percent). That confirms the Idaho Department of Education’s finding that LPOSD has way more employees than the state recommends.

I want to see some substantial cuts in salaries before I’ll vote for a levy.

LOUIS PERRY

Sandpoint