After four school repair and enhancement referendums failed to pass last year I was beginning to second guess if I had made a poor choice by buying my home in Brown Deer.

With last week Tuesday’s landslide passage (66% voted yes) of a referendum to support fixing serious problems in our high school including repair of our dilapidated and embarrassing science labs, my concerns about the future of Brown Deer evaporated.

I bought my home in Brown Deer fifteen years ago because Brown Deer had a good reputation for quality schools, even though I didn’t even have a child at the time, and because I found that Brown Deer afforded me the opportunity to have a good sized back yard. Aside from finding that I’m not fond of the half hour I spend each weekend mowing grass, I’ve been pretty happy with my decision.

At the same time I’ve been concerned over what I perceived to be a growing NIMBYism (Not in my back yard) from people who have presented themselves as community leaders here. Hearing a constant barrage of whining about our taxes to the detriment of children’s education was making me think I was part of a minority who was actually concerned about education.

Now I’ve got to admit, when it comes to taxes, I’m one of those people who doesn’t mind paying my fair share as long as I see some value and some results for what I’m paying. I think people who constantly whine about their taxes and say no to everyone but themselves are not only detriments to our community, but they’re poor citizens who lack community values. I don’t live hand to mouth because my wife and I have made several wise decisions regarding both investments and our career choices.

I can also understand why the referendum went down in flames last year. It was a lot of money, all at one time. Even I looked at last years referendum and thought to myself “wow, that’s going to be expensive”. I know of several good community minded people who said they wouldn’t support last years referendum because it was just too much all at once. I can understand why it failed last year. After all, just because you like pie doesn’t mean you eat the whole thing in one sitting.

This year, education advocates focused on the worst of the worst problems in our schools — to them I say “good job”.

I’m hopeful that they continue to look at ways to solve problems in our schools and if that means additional, bite sized referendums must be brought before voters, then so be it. The high school problems may be solved by yesterdays vote, but there are still serious infrastructure problems in the other school buildings to be addressed in the future. Had previous leaders not let our schools fall into such disrepair in the first place, this would not even be an issue now.