Orange school tax déjà vu?
I'm having a serious case of deja vu.
Orange County's school district is asking voters to approve a sales tax to fix up old schools .
They are buying billboards and sending voters mail pushing the catchy "Change 4 Kids" slogan.
They've trotted out a list of crumbling schools that they say won't get repaired if voters don't go for the half-penny tax.
Oh, and there's Dick Batchelor, one of this community's highest profile political animals, in the middle of it all.
Everything about this makes me feel like it's 2002 all over again. That was the first time Orange schools asked for the tax and promised to rebuild a list of 136 schools.
Back then, just like now, the campaign was championed by Batchelor.
I asked him bluntly, "What's the deal? Did you plan to do this all over again just 12 years later?"
"No," he told me flatly. "They had some missteps and that's to put it euphemistically."
Naturally, then, voters deserve to know why they should even consider giving the school district an extra half penny for another 10 years. If the district couldn't get it right the first time around, why should we believe this time will be any different?
When the current tax expires at the end of 2015, the district will have only gotten to 94 of the 136 schools on the original list.
A student who only completed 69 percent of an assignment would earn a "D."
The performance of bureaucrats and elected school board members was so bad that Batchelor and a group of parents sued the district for shirking the promises it made.
Why on Earth would Batchelor lend his name to the cause again?
He says a lot has changed. I can't disagree.
The School Board now has an elected chairman and Batchelor says he has a lot of confidence in the person in that job, Bill Sublette.
The district also fixed its math, admitting that 12 years ago it failed to consider that the half penny sales tax would only apply to the first $5,000 of purchases. Bean counters wrongly assumed the half cent to apply to the full price of every Mercedes when, in reality, the district would never collect more than the taxes owed on a used Civic.
And there's a new team in place in the facilities department, which had done an abysmal job of keeping building projects on track.
John Morris, who helped the Orlando Magic manage the construction of the new arena and oversaw the last big expansion at the Orange County Convention Center, took over in 2011 and cleaned house .
"The majority of the people who were here when I came on board aren't here anymore," said Morris, the district's chief facilities officer.