Yeah, I’m going to complain about the new Grand Junction High School. And yes, I’m still going to be silly enough to believe presenting the thoughts I’ve put into ink on paper for the past two decades will be read and absorbed by folks who’re already screaming talking points at me for how wrong I am. I get it.

But I also get this. There should be no crown jewels in government be it on their heads, where they reside or where they conduct business. Doesn’t mean things can’t be nice. But they also have to function and get the results as intended to the benefit of all people equally. So tell me where you’ve seen government accomplish any of that in our electeds, its programs or palaces?

So here goes nothing, or hopefully at least a little something for thought.

Since the day I moved to Grand Junction in 2000, I’ve understood the desperate need to replace Grand Junction High School. At that time, Mesa County School District 51 was already 20 years or so behind the eight ball on the projected replacement date. Read that again — 20 years. And during the next 20 plus years, I wrote about this topic several times as D51 tried ballot initiative after ballot initiative to no avail to get the thing built. Maybe because those initiatives were guilt-driven or Christmas tree-style bonds attempting to ask for more than they needed to solve every problem of D51’s making so they never passed?

But as government is prone to do in Grand Junction, they were gonna find a way to build the new high school come hell or high water. First off, they took my advice and made the ballot initiative a single issue asking for money strictly to build the high school and nothing else. Who knew D51 had such common sense? Trust me, it was short-lived. Because if D51 is known for anything, it’s this. As evidenced by how many time it asks for tax increases — including the coming ask to NOT sunset a couple of previous ballot initiatives along with nearly half a BILLION dollars in building and maintenance needs from its latest report — always going to the voters for more and more money because it doesn’t have the funding to get the job done.

And what did D51 use to pass the ballot initiative for the new high school? Ironically, to me, more you hate children guilt and a money ask making the new high school a 1970’s JC Penny Wishbook of bureaucratic overspending. Want more irony? That’s the decade in which the high school should have been replaced. Yet, parents who wouldn’t consider buying everything on Marsha or Greg’s wish list went full steam ahead in approving the demands of our self-proclaimed civic leaders — apparently you can declare yourself a leader, no election needed — and told the district it had $150 million-plus to do as it pleased.

And people wonder why I called it the Taj Mahal?

For those of you too lazy to Google, Taj Mahal literally means crown palace. And just how was our new high school described in every news report after its grand opening? You guessed it: D51’s crown jewel. This time in the form of a palace — which ironically from the Seventh Street view looks oddly like a 1970s JC Penny. Go ahead, do a looky-loo at the mall and past the school. It just screams windowless, benign, beige. But the new tiger is sure pretty — thanks Louis. Figures the private dollars stand apart at the entrance.

Again, I’m not saying the new high school shouldn’t be nice, safe and a quality learning environment for administrators, teachers and students.
As a matter of fact, I assert every building under D51s supervision should be so. But they aren’t. And that’s a fact. Here’s another one. For the amount spent on one new school, D51 could have two or three new schools and several million to begin addressing all those building and maintenance needs it’s about to ask the voters to approve in the hundreds of millions of dollars. That is, once it guilts us into not sunsetting bond issues already in place. And once we approve those two, expect D51 at the public trough and vomitorium every year or two saying, “Please sir, may I have some more?”

Then D51 can throw up another crown jewel for our oohs and aahs while the majority only gets rhinestones. But when you think about it, maybe that’s all we should get and all they should build — across the board. After all, rhinestones are functional and do the job, shine like diamonds and display wonderfully and worked very well for our gold medal winning women’s gymnastics team. Don’t all kids deserve that? All teachers?

Fact is, government should be limited to rhinestones. There’s a reason conquerors don’t destroy the mansions and palaces in lands they conquer. It’s because they believe themselves superior and only the select deserve to live in those comforts.
So why only certain kids and teachers?

Why is this the lesson they are teaching from our schools instead of the Three Rs or budgeting or living within your means?