Although a former mayor tried to blame the majority of the high taxes here in Schenectady on the school district (he was lying), our school taxes are pretty high. I was giving this some thought the other day when I was looking something up on the school's website.

All in all, the school district delivers much more in return for the money they get from us. I say this because the school district is followingstate law as to what it has to deliver, and it delivers what it is supposed to. I may disagree with the how and how well of what it does, but it does the job. X number of kids go through the system and receive what they are supposed to receive. How effectively this happens, or whether the schools veer off onto tangents, that doesn't change the central fact that they do the job. A glaring exception would be that janitor having way too much to say about the running of things, but the kids still went to school. He didn't affect that.

The city, that's another story. Basic services we have paid for are lacking, and money is thrown away on projects and in areas these clowns have no business at all getting into. The mayor is not Donald Trump and needs to stay out of real estate. City departments often have no idea what their job is supposed to be as opposed to what they do all day. Weeds grow around city hall. The media constantly refer to the city as "cash strapped", but that is simply not true. It's like the stories lately about EBT withdrawals by welfare recipients in strip clubs and so forth. The city is the welfare recipient that squanders the money meant for other purposes.

If the school district was run like the city, buses would be idle, kids would be sitting at home, and you would go over to the schools andthey would still be there, but they would be using them for a casino or some such thing, the superintendent would be a croupier maybe,if you asked them what gives they would tell you that Schenectady is cash strapped so they can't do their jobs.