McHenry County Blog

Chris Jenner

Tom Wilbeck

It came from something called “For Our Children’s Future.”

The attribution said that it was an independent expenditure and the candidates were not responsible for it or its content.

The message mentioned Chris Jenner and Tom Wilbeck’s names twice and said they were against raising tuition and the health and fitness club, which would compete with the YMCA.

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I tracked down the message. It is below:

“Hello, I calling for you to support Chris Jenner and Thomas Wilbeck, your McHenry County College Trustee Candidates.

“Chris and Thomas do NOT believe in raising tuition for our students, nor raising property taxes on the taxpayer to build a $42 million dollar Health Club on the backs of the taxpayer.

“That is what the YMCA is for.

“Please vote for Jenner and Wilbeck tomorrow April 9th for McHenry County College Trustees.

“Remember Vote Jenner and Wilbeck.

“This message is paid for exclusively by ‘For Our Children’s Future.’ This Message is not approved by or paid for by any candidate.”

Woodstock attorney Jane Collins wondered what backed up the power point presentation (see Part 1 and Part 2) given to the McHenry County College Board about the proposed Health & Fitness Club, plus almost doubling the size of the classroom and laboratory space.

So, she filed a Freedom of Information request on January 8th.

It was denied.

Collins appealed to the Illinois Attorney General’s Division of Public Access.

Below you can read what MCC’s attorneys at Robbins Schwartz wrote in defense of that denial:

Here is Collins’ reply:

Jane Collins
Attorney at Law
13610 Kishwaukee Valley Road
Woodstock Illinois 60098
Telephone and facsimile: 815-338-8339
email: jlcadvocate@sbcglobal.net

Date: 4/3/13

To: Steve Silverman, Assistant Attorney General

Office of the Attorney General, Public Access Counselor

Re: FOIA Request for Review — 2013 PAC 23558

Dear Mr. Silverman:

Jane Collins

On Saturday, March 30,2013 I received a copy of McHenry County College’s response from its legal counsel to your office’s request for additional information about MCC’s denial of a January 8, 2013 FOIA request for documentation supporting a Feasibility Study, Phase I.

MCC denied the “Meritrage Market Assessment and Competitive Analysis Report” dated August 2012. It based its denial on a letter from Power Wellness Management [PW] informing MCC that disclosing Meritrage’s report to the public would violate a confidentiality agreement between PW and Meritrage.

Attached to my January 20, 2013 request for review: MCC’s confirmation that it has no confidentiality agreement with PW, nor any contract with Meritrage. Also attached: an agreement for Phase I of the Feasibility Study which does not mention Meritrage, nor bind MCC to confidentiality in PW’s work products listed in Appendix A.

What MCC is telling its constituents: we have a report that we’ve relied on to persuade you that we can construct a new $42 million facility without raising your taxes. You paid for the report.

But you can’t see it.

The report should be released for the following reasons:

I. The study is a “public record” by FOIA definition. It was prepared for and used by MCC to formulate a power point report on its Feasibility Study, Phase I, 9/18/12. (Attachment #1) It is in MCC’s possession, presumably integral to the power point report imprinted with MCC’s — not Power Wellness’s — logo. (But without attribution to Meritrage.)

II. MCC is not bound by an agreement to which it is not a party, nor to Meritrage with whom it has no contract.

MCC counsel states that disclosure of Meritrage’s report “could subject the College to litigation by Power Wellness Management or Meritrage Healthcare Strategies,” but provides no evidence showing how MCC is contractually bound by an agreement to which it is not a party.

It is Meritrage who claims its work is proprietary. Counsel offers no written evidence that MCC, who has no contract with Meritrage, has ever agreed to keep the Meritrage report confidential.

Further, if litigation were a viable threat, why did Moraine Valley Community College, another PW client, provide to this requester, without reservation, Meritrage’s market survey for MVCC, also marked confidential? (Attachment #2.)

III. MCC has failed to meet its burden of proving that the record it denied falls within the FOIA exemption claimed.

Claiming that a record is “proprietary” is not enough. FOIA exemption 7(1)(g) requires counsel to show that disclosure of the trade secrets or commercial or financial information, if disclosed, would cause competitive harm. No evidence provided.

There is a claim, however, that “[d]isclosing the Report would have a chilling effect on the College’s ability to contract with private companies and/or receive similar information from private companies in the future.”

Again, there is no evidence to support this assertion.

In fact, but for Meritrage’s special relationship with PW, it might not have been chosen to conduct MCC’s market survey.

There was no competitive bidding.

And it seems speculative to claim that other market survey companies would not be willing to compete for the College’s business.

Or be unwilling to disclose how they work, to ensure that such surveys are independent and objective, so may be relied upon.

To justify MCC’s denial, its counsel relies on the Blue Star Energy case.

But this is the case most often cited to show how narrowly the FOIA exemption 7(1)(g) must be applied. Most often, in a setting where commercial rivals, like Blue Star Energy, thwarted from acquiring trade secrets through discovery at trial, resort to FOIA to obtain them, as in this case from the agency (ICC) who regulates energy companies.

Those facts are inapposite to these, where MCC — unlike its sister college, MVCC — refuses to release a public record to its taxpayer constituents exercising their right to know.

Blue Star does apply here, but only to illustrate that MCC’s denial cannot meet what the claimed exemption.

For all of the above reasons, I respectfully request that the AGPAC Office advise MCC that it must release the requested record to the public.

Sincerely,

Jane L. Collins

cc: Laura J. Brown, McHenry County College FOIA Officer (letter only) ZA

McHenry County College will soon look like this.

Tonight I answered a four-question survey about McHenry County College’s proposal to build a health club.

It was from an organization I have never heard of and I doubt exists.

I heard “McHenry County Better Government Organization.” Maybe I didn’t write it down accurately.

Regardless, if it exists as anything but a front group, I’d be surprised.

The questions were roughly the following:

1. McHenry County College is proposing a multi-[?} expansion. If you are in favor, press one button, if not, another.
2. McHenry County College is at 50% capacity. Should it be expanded? If you are in favor, press one button, if not, another.
3. McHenry County is planning to build a health club. If you are in favor, press one button, if not, another.
4. McHenry County College plans to pay for the health club by increasing tuition. If you favor having tuition increase, press one button, if no, another.

In one or more of the questions there was an “undecided” option.

The question in my mind is who would want to know that information.

There are lots of candidates running for the McHenry County College Board.

Some are vehemently opposed to building a health club (think Chris Jenner, Tom Wilbeck, Erik Sivertsen).

If they had this information, they could target those who answered the questions in the negative.

McHenry County College has again refused to reveal what’s up with the $50,000 tainted so-called feasibility study by Power Wellness.

Take a look at the most recent turn down letter to Jane Collins:

The following was sent by a McHenry County College student:

To Whom It May Concern:

Go to school they said. Get a degree they said. Like any productive member of society I strived to get ahead in life. I pushed so hard that I bypassed high school and went straight to college.

When I was 15, I enrolled in McHenry County College.

I discovered a world of knowledge, I was finally free to learn about what I wanted from instructors who taught not for huge state salaries or glory but for the passion of lighting a spark in students and changing the world.

McHenry County College

The message was clear study hard, strive for success and take the knowledge you receive at MCC and apply it to a higher degree at a 4 year school.

So I studied hard, I basked in the knowledge and guidance that I was given and I truly grew as a student and as a person. I gathered the 60 credits I needed to graduate and received an Associate of Science degree, I was 17 and realized that I had no idea what I wanted to choose as a degree path and decided to take some time to figure out which career I was passionate about.

Life happened and I got active in the I/T field and I started my own small business at 20. After 8 years of running a small business, I realized that no particular field held more passion for me than business itself.

I decided to return to school and work towards my BS in management.

My first choice was to return to my alma mater MCC and take any classes that I could in an environment that
I knew was positive and conducive to learning and self improvement.

The display windows of the McHenry County College Bookstore.

I decided to take macroeconomics and I was lucky, the instructor, Peter Daley was an experienced business professional. He had worked in many fields of business and logistics and had real world knowledge that he was passionate about and his enthusiasm was infectious. I was excited, I found that I really had a zeal to continue where I had left off and I found myself integrating knowledge from class into my everyday actions as a consumer. As I mentioned I was lucky.

The next semester, I had my first exposure to “Connect” cards. Publishers don’t feel that they make enough money from textbook sales now that used books are exchanged freely or even rented on websites like chegg.com. Some students have even discovered that you can buy international versions of textbooks which are the same as the US edition but ¼ the price due to other countries refusing to pay inflated prices for texts. Publishers decided to hatch a plot to keep students tied to their distribution model. They would sell the same texts as always but now students would have to spend an extra $50 to $100 for a plastic card with a code on the back.

Much like a gift card there is a scratch off section on the back that once scratched makes the card unusable. The publishers needed an angle to get the schools on board so they introduced a new way to educate students. All the lectures are powerpoints prepared by the publisher that instructors can use in lieu of a lesson plan. All the homework and tests are accessed via the connect code through the publishers website.

All the instructor has to do now is stumble into class and flip through the powerpoint and direct the students to do their homework and tests online, the publisher does all the preparation and grades all the homework and tests for the cost of the connect card. Now the schools are firmly on board. Why have to supervise the staff and make sure the students are being taught when we can have the publisher do the work for us and all we have to do is charge each student another $50 to $100 each class?

The photo of the accounting course.

Students believe it or not are intelligent. When all the homework and tests are online and completed at home all you have to do is submit each question to google and the answers are at your fingertips. That’s assuming that you don’t have someone else log in to your connect account and complete your work for you. I realize that would be unethical but can instructors really hold students to a higher standard when their work is completed by a third party also?

The new system was pretty upsetting and left a bad taste in my mouth but I had had instructors that had challenged me and pushed me out of my comfort zone in the past.

When I was getting my AS, I had an instructor that was new at MCC and had some radical idea. He felt that the best way to learn our political system was to get assigned a role in a simulation and be held accountable for getting laws passed or explaining why you failed. I wanted to read a book and write papers not actually interact with the system, but in the end I actually achieved a working knowledge of politics which no test would have instilled.

I knuckled down and decided to give it a semester and see how things went. That semester was rough.

I had an instructor who was obviously uncomfortable with the new system and technology. Each class would open with an hour break to work on the homework from the previous class that had been due before class started and was inaccessible.

Assuming the stars aligned and the current week’s homework unlocked I would just work it while the other students presumably checked their facebook walls. Then we would be treated to a 15 to 30 minute session of scribbling on the board and erasing when the examples were incorrect. Then we were told that we could access the powerpoint lecture slides ourselves and directed to work on our homework for the remaining hour and a half of class.

Ok, I felt that I was wasting my time in class but maybe the teacher was a luddite, MCC was still a great school about helping students right?

I decided to grit my teeth and go back to MCC for one last semester before gathering my credits to transfer to a college to complete my bachelors.

Information captured from the bookstore.

Which leads me to my reason for writing this.

In December 2012, I went to the bookstore and took pictures of the required text cards for each of my three classes and ordered the books and connect cards online. The spring term started January 14th and I had all the required materials in hand and read for my classes.

Then I went online and tried to use my access card for my Macroeconomics class, the website said I had ordered the incorrect card version and my card was not useable. I was frustrated but I assumed I must have made a mistake when ordering and resigned to having lost $60. I signed up for a trial account and completed my assignments.

The following evening was my first managerial accounting class. After the previous card issue I was determined to verify I had the right card and not get stuck wasting another card as this one cost $100 on top of the $120 used textbook required. I asked the student next to me to see her card and verified that the ISBN on both cards were the same, her card also had the ACC152 sticker the bookstore uses to ensure the cards are correct.

I opened my card and went to the website and tried to enter it. This card also came back as being the incorrect version and unusable. Almost every student in the room had been sold the wrong cards. After class I spoke to another student and she had been sold wrong card for our accounting class and macroeconomics as well. I was very upset and decided to verify my cards against the pictures I had taken in the bookstore and it turns out that I had ordered the correct cards that the bookstore specified.

I immediately opened a support ticket with the publisher on 1/16/13 to see if they could exchange my card, it has been almost four weeks at this point and I have submitted another request to support and have received no response.

I co tacted the website I had ordered from and asked if I could return my opened but unused cards. The website unfortunately cannot accept returns on open cards as per their policy which is perfectly understandable. At this point I have $160 in cards that are worthless based on the MCC bookstore’s erroneous information.

The bookstore sells sweatshirts.

On 1/18/13 I went to the bookstore to see why they had only gotten the books correct for one of the three classes I was enrolled in. I spoke to an employee and was told that the incorrect information was the fault of the instructors and due to a law change they had to post information even if they knew it was incorrect.

I decided to investigate the issue further and found that the head of accounting Don Curfman was on campus.
I went to Don Curfman’s office and spoke to him about the issue and was informed that the accounting department had changed the cards the previous summer and the bookstore had ordered old cards even though they had been using the 2nd version card the previous fall.

He said the bookstore knew of the issue and it should have been resolved. He then went to the bookstore and after investigating found the bookstore still had the incorrect cards on the shelf as of 12:20 p.m. on 1/18/13 a full week after the semester had started. I wanted to get more information and make sure that the bookstore had some policy to make sure other students didn’t have to suffer financial hardships for the bookstores inability to accurately order the correct books. I sent an email to Todd Culp the director of the Economics department who was off campus but responded the same day and he said he would verify with the instructor that the texts submitted to the bookstore were correct.

I then spoke to the College President’s secretary, she stated she would forward my issue to the vice president who would get it resolved.

Later that day I received a call from the bookstore supervisor.

She curtly told me that the correct ISBN for my accounting book was 0077429494. I explained to her at this point I had that information but I would like to understand why they had only gotten 33% of my classes books requirements correct and how I could verify that myself and other students wouldn’t have the same issue in the future.

She informed me that the bookstore had numerous problems and had to eat the cost of approximately 180 cards for my accounting class alone. She went on to point the blame [to] everyone from

• the instructors
• the department heads
• the book sales representatives [to]
• the publishers

She made it clear that this is a widespread problem and made it seem commonplace.

I asked if there was anything they could do to address my losses due to their inability to correctly perform their duties as a college bookstore. She told me that they would be happy to exchange my cards for the correct ones but only if I had purchased them after 1/14/13, the first day of the semester. I found this pretty upsetting because the arbitrary day of 1/14/ 13 is meaningless when you consider that had I not gotten involved and Don Curfman not investigated my issue the bookstore would still have the wrong cards on the shelf 5 days after that day.

I resolved to accept the fact that the bookstore was not going to rectify their error but decided that if I was going to eat $160 personally I would like to know how the bookstore intended to address the issue going forward.

I was told that I should wait until after class starts to buy any of my materials and that I should only buy them directly from the bookstore. I was then told that they have a disclaimer on their website that says they are subject to make errors and that is apparently the entirety of their attempt at fixing the issue.

On a positive note, I did receiv ean email from my Macroeconomics instructor saying that the bookstore had finally acquired the correct cards for that class on 1/24/13 so roughly 2 weeks after class started and one week after I got involved students could finally get the materials for the two classes I raised issues about, unfortunately I can only guess how many other classes were incorrect and if those issues got resolved.

The proposed entrance to the minor league baseball stadium that struck out.

I realize that MCC is in a constant state of change and it’s value to the county’s residents is multifaceted.

I feel that somewhere in it’s mad rush to build glass edifices to vanity and tilt at

• the windmills of sports stadiums and
• fitness centers

the mission to be accountable as an educational institution has been lost.

Rather than strive to expand while maintaining the exceptional academic standards that MCC could rightfully be proud of, we have ended up with a degree mill where the students and instructors are merely warm bodies to keep the bills paid and line the book publishers pockets.

We no longer have an active part in the process, we pay the tuition and go to class that is little more than an excuse to justify buildings while all the supposed “learning” is farmed out.

The bookstore which has become the gatekeeper to this brave new world cannot manage to serve it’s core function of correctly selling the books required.

My attempts to this resolve the one issue highlight the lack of accountability and the sad state that the college has fallen to.

It is with much regret that I say that the current state of what passes for an education that MCC is granting degrees on devalues not just the degrees achieved by myself and all the alumni but also the hard work and dedication of all the faculty that have made mcc what it once was.

I feel that rather than sending out surveys to earmark funding into pet projects like fitness centers and asking whether students need an indoor walking track or a spa, the MCC leadership need to ask students and faculty how we can better the education that used to be MCC’s point of pride.

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The student adds, “The college VP did immediately contact me and suggest they are working on the issue.”

For $35 you can meet and mingle with those who support Lakewood’s Tom Wilbeck for McHenry County College Board.

On his invitation, Wilbeck stresses,

“Tom is opposed to MCC issuing bonds for expansion without voter approval.”

The event will be held at the London Club, which is across the street from 1776, on March 14th.

Details are below:

Part 2 of the Chicago Tribune said about Lakewood’s alternative revenue bond purchase of what is not called RedTail Golf Club:

Lakewood is featured as one of the villages

“where bets backfired on taxpayers…where taxpayers should have been protected form tax increases” but weren’t…where “taxpayers instead awoke to hikes they never approved, ones that even exceeded what the law normally allows.”

Lakewood did not make the front page of the story, but the financing of the golf course it bought is referenced on page 10.

The Red Tail Golf Course, financed by alternative revenue bonds not approved by the taxpayers, did not come with a permanent clubhouse. .

“That’s how taxpayers is upscale Lakewood in McHenry County ended up paying for a golf course they were told wouldn’t cost a them a dime.”

Although I was not quoted in the story, I have replayed the interchange between the three residents and the then-village board several times to the current village board members.

There were three of us there.

Former Village Trustee Roger Reid said that he didn’t think it was the role of government to be in the golf club business.

Attorney Jim Bishop asked if board members knew that golf courses all over McHenry County were having financial problems.

I asked, “Is this ever going to cost me a dime?”

I was assured that it would not.

The breaching of that assurance undoubtedly explains my defense of the Property Tax Cap, which prohibited the issuance of bonds without a referendum.  (I lost the fight to keep that prohibition for park districts and you can see the most recent “need” determined by the Crystal Lake Park District at West Beach.)

A sports management company made the projections that the golf course in Lakewood would pay for itself.   The Tribune article explains,

“Some residents remained skeptical, including [former Village Trustee] Roger Reid, who recalls going with a small group to the Village Board meeting to ask for assurance that taxes would not go up because of the deal.

“‘We were assured–up and down and sideways–that, “This is not going to go on you tax bill,”‘ Reid recalled.

“Then residents were hit with the catch in the law:  If projections are off, taxes can go up.

“Turns out, the town’s projections were so far off that the golf course couldn’t even pay a penny toward its loan payment for six years.  And, by the time the bond was paid off two years ago, records show, 53 percent of it was paid off through higher taxes, not the projected golf course profit.”

The Tribune article points out that no state agency verifies financial projections that will be made by firms like Power Wellness, the health club firm McHenry County College hired to justify putting taxpayers on the hook for paying back tens of millions of dollars in projected borrowed money.

Although the Illinois Attorney General has authority to “advocate for taxpayers misled by the deals…the issue has never been raised there.”

No mention is made in this Northwest Herald article of the financial fiasco that occurred in Lakewood because of the use of alternative revenue bonds.  And there is no way to finance the MCC health club without going to referendum without using alternative revenue bonds.

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If you into irony, the day after the Tribune article about the abuses of alternative revenue bonds ran, the Northwest Herald ran diminishing the dangers involved in using alternative revenue bonds.

On January 6, 2013, right on the top of the Sunday Chicago Tribune, there was an expose that should send warning flares up about the alternative revenue bonds that the majority of the McHenry County College Board seem set to issue.

The January 6, 2013, article by Joe Mahr and Joseph Ryan about small suburbs like Lakewood having made a decision that backfired on property taxpayers.

Alternative revenue bonds are ones ostensibly to be repaid by identified sources of revenue, for example in MCC’s case, an increase in student fees of $8 per hour, increased tuition from more enrollment and health club fees among other sources…

But, just in case, don’t you know, to be paid by property taxes if the projected revenues from the other non-real estate sources don’t bring in enough money.

The Tribune doesn’t look at junior colleges in its article. As the headline implies, it looks at “Small suburbs [that have] exploit[ed} tax loophole."

The sub-headline on the front page reads,

"Even in places where residents might expect tighter oversight, Illinois borrowing rules let towns sidestep voters, make decisions that can backfire on taxpayers"

McHenry County College taxpayers managed

• not to step in the Briar Patch when the Board wanted to borrow, without asking voters at the ballot box, $25 million to finance a minor league baseball stadium,
• but are facing a similar entangling long-term obligation in current Board members' desired to borrow, without voter approval, $45 million to build a health club and new classrooms (even while only using the classrooms 45% of the time).

Lakewood’s Red Tail Golf Course, purchased with revenue bonds which could not be repaid without forcing real estate taxes up.

The story describes alternative revenue bonds as a

“device that lets towns borrow in a way that sidesteps voters and property tax caps.

• The catch for towns:  They must be able to foresee paying off the loans without raising property taxes.
• The catch for residents:  If towns’ projections are wrong, taxes are automatically hiked to make the loan payments.

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More tomorrow.

On January 7th, the Northwest Herald headline read, “MCC: No need to tap taxpayers,” The sub-headline read, “College says it won’t go to referendum for proposed expansion.”

Interpret this press release as you wish, but I think the bill is aimed at McHenry County College.

It could be aimed at abuses in Lakewood from over twenty years ago when the Village Board sold alternative revenue bonds to buy a golf course.

That abuse, in which Lakewood sold bonds backed by golf course revenues which fell 53% short of paying back the borrowed money, was featured, along with other similar, non-Home Rule municipal abuses in which villages made an end-run around taxpayers was featured in the Sunday Chicago Tribune on January 6th.

January 6th was one day before the Northwest Herald ran an article on its front page reassuring readers that tax dollars wold not be needed to pay for the proposed more than $40-plus million health club, et al.

In any event, here is the joint press release:

McSweeney-Franks Aim to End Alternate Revenue Bond Abuses

McHenry County –State Representative David McSweeney (R-Barrington Hills) and State Representative Jack Franks (D-Marengo) have filed HB983; a bipartisan effort to ensure greater fiscal accountability.

Recent press reports have exposed how the current alternate revenue bond law has facilitated risky deals that have resulted in increased local taxes.

If passed, the new legislation would address the ease at which alternative revenue bonds are issued because the current process sidesteps taxpayers and property tax caps in many cases.

David McSweeney

“This is a common sense bill that allows taxpayers to more easily organize a referendum to oppose local borrowing proposals,” said McSweeney.

“We are talking about large sums of taxpayer money.

“Property taxes are skyrocketing while local governments keep borrowing for what they want and cannot afford.”

For alternate revenue bonds, HB 983 provides for measures to encourage fiscal responsibility by making the Chief Procurement officer [a state official] responsible for providing accurate information about how alternate revenue bonds would be paid off.

Local governments would no longer be able to use consultants to do this important work.

Revenues from the venture should be able to pay off 150% of the debt; this is being increased from 100%.

Finally, the bill extends the allowance for petition signatures for a backdoor referendum from 30 to 90 days and in order to initiate a referendum this bill would require the lesser of 5% (currently 7.5%) of registered voters in the governmental unit or 500 signatures of those registered voters.

The most significant change is to require only 500 signatures to initiate a backdoor referendum.

Jack Franks

“Municipalities have little oversight when it comes to borrowing millions of dollars which often times end up being a back door tax hike on residents, ” added Franks.

“Oversight needs to be put into the hands of the taxpayers. We must increase accountability for our taxing bodies and empower the taxpayers to serve as fiscal guardians.”

Rep. McSweeney is Chief Sponsor of HB983 and Rep. Franks signed on as Chief Co-Sponsor. The legislation was filed yesterday.

Moraine Valley Community College sold alternative revenue bonds a year ago to finance a health club and other structures.

I’m looking at the alternative revenue bond statement approved by bond counsel Chapman and Cutler.

How does the document say they will be paid off?

“…payable from

1. the construction/infrastructure improvement fee imposed upon students of the District (the “Improvement Fee”), wellness center membership fees and other lawfully available funds of the District (the “Pledged Revenues”); and
2. ad valorem property taxes levied upon all of the taxable property in the District without limitation as to rate or amount (the “Pledged Taxes” and together with the Pledged Revenues, the “Pledged Moneys”), and all taxable property in the District is subject to the levy of such taxes…

That’s pretty much what Power Wellness’ so-called feasibility study is pointing toward for McHenry County College’s $45 million health club and other additions.

Page 6 of the document puts it this way:

If student fees and health club fees are not enough to pay back the bonds, money will come out of the education fund. That means repayment of the alternative revenue bonds at Moraine Valley Community College would come before paying faculty.

Of course, Moraine Valley only borrowed $5.4 million, not the $45 million that McHenry County College officials are banding about..

No need to ask for voter permission for these alternative revenue bonds.

And the team in charge of the MCC Board won’t.

And that means that if the project is NOT self-supporting, then the current MCC board has to cut funds available for operating purposes — including teacher salaries — for the next 30 years!