State Center Community College District's New Bond Proposal

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This November will be quite the time, quite the time
for this elaborate house of cards constructed out of proposed
bond initiatives for education, and the whole thing could result
in a massive amount of increased taxes all over the

(00:23):
state of California, or the whole steck of cards, the
whole palace of cards could come tumbling down with lots
of local and statewide elections all sort of hinging around.
Maybe there's money available, maybe people will be dumb enough

(00:45):
to vote for all these bond initiatives. And the last,
the most recent entity to throw their hat into the
ring is the State Center Community College District. So this
is the community colleg blood district that runs Fresno City
and a bunch of the Fresno Sanwaquin Valley area. Community

(01:07):
college is Readley College, Clovis Community, et cetera. The State
Center Community College District Board of Directors yesterday voted seven
to nothing to put a six hundred and ninety eight
million dollars bond measure on the November ballot. There was

(01:32):
little discussion by the board before the vote. Oh good glad,
we didn't discuss it very much. But the trustees heard
from a number of audience members in person and online
expressing strong support for the bond measure. The trustees also
heard from consultants who detailed community support for a bond measure,
in particular from surveyed women who were likelier to vote

(01:52):
in favor of the bond measure than the men's surveyed.
One of the things that happened fairly recently is there's
been a shift in the national discourse with a certain
political campaign, Consultant Catherine lew said, an apparent reference to
Vice President Kamala Harris rising to the top of the
Democratic ticket, and we are expecting that women will continue
to be very energized on a number of issues, including yours. Well,

(02:17):
that's good because women's votes count more than that. They
get one point five votes and men only get one vote. Right,
that is that true? Oh that's not true? Oh okay.
The board also unanimously approved a resolution in support of
the ten billion dollar Proposition two that would provide state
facilities matching funds for school and community college districts. All right,

(02:38):
so what is going on? You might be asking yourself,
why is Fresno unified? Why do they have a bond
initiative on the ballot. Why does Close Unified have a
bond initiative on the ballot? What do all these local
school districts have bond measures on the ballot? Why does
the State Center Community College District? They're getting in on
the act. What's going on? Well, what's happening is there

(02:59):
is a state wide ten billion dollar bond initiative, Proposition two,
statewide ballot measure that all of the voters of California
will be voting on up or down, yay or nay,
will we support a ten billion dollar bond measure? And

(03:26):
that funding from Proposition two will go to elementary slash
primary school school districts the Clovis Unified s, Fresney unifieds,
et cetera of the world, and some of it will
go to community college districts like State Center Community College District.

(03:50):
The catch, though, is that a lot of the money
from this statewide bond measure will come in the form
of matching funds. So if your local school district can
pass a bond measure to raise let's say, four hundred
million bucks, you might be able to get in return

(04:12):
four hundred million state bucks, but the amount you can
get from the state will not be as high if
you're not yourself raising local bond revenue money. Now this
gets to my This is where I get to my rant,
my rant as the apostle against local bond initiatives. A

(04:36):
bond is a loan. Fundamentally, I feel like people vote
for these bonds and don't really truly understand what they are.
A bond is a loan to a municipal entity like
a city or a county, or a school district or

(05:00):
a state or a community college district. It is a loan.
The school district gets the money up front, and then
the voters, who the taxpayers rather who live within the
boundary of that school district, have to pay that loan back,

(05:27):
usually over a thirty year term with interest. I don't
know how many of you follow what's going on with
the economy these days, but interest rates are really high
right now, much higher than they were five years ago,

(05:47):
four years ago, and the amount that we are going
to have to pay back in our taxes is going
to be much higher than the sticker price for the
bond measure. If that statewide bond measure is ten billion dollars,

(06:11):
then the people of California, the taxpayers of California are
going to have to pay back over the course of time,
probably more than twenty billion dollars. Clovis Unified wants a
four hundred million dollar bond measure. We're going to have
to pay about eight hundred million back. President Unified wants

(06:35):
five hundred million. That'll be about a billion that we
have to pay back in taxes. Because that's how loans
with interest work. If you've got a loan and you
have to pay it back with interest and the interest
rate's really high over the a thirty year term, if
your interest rate is over like six percent, which is

(06:55):
the ballpark we're in right now, you're gonna wind up
paying almost as much in interest as you paid in principle.
So it is a preposterously bad deal. I just want

(07:18):
to make this clear. This is not a good deal.
It is a bad deal for the taxpayer because yeah,
oh the school district it's and I have been ranting
about this for years. School districts love the mechanism of

(07:40):
the bond measure. They love it. They absolutely love it.
They can sell it as if it's fake money because
local media never covers it, I think fully the way
they should. I read this old piece in GV Wire

(08:02):
about this six hundred and ninety eight, so seven hundred
let's call it seven hundred million, seven hundred million dollars
bond measure for State Center Community College District. Not once
do they mention in the article what is the interest
rate at which this bond money would be borrowed and
what is the total what is the term of repayment,

(08:25):
and thus what is the total amount we can expect
to pay? No one ever reports on that. That's never
reported on, And I feel like it's such a disservice
when local media does this or fails to do this,
Rather like every story about a bond measure should say explicitly,

(08:47):
this bond measure would provide the school district with four
hundred million dollars. The loan would be taken out at
this interest rate based on the rates based on the
FEDS activity and blah blah blah. This is where interest
rates stand. The amount, the total amount that taxpayers would
pay back over the course of the thirty year life
of the loan, or however long the loan repayment life is,

(09:11):
will be this much, barring refinancing of the loan over
the course of time. Now because you stack up all
these little taxes, you stack up this sales tax and

(09:32):
this property tax in this sales tax in this property tax,
and all of a sudden, you're the most overtaxed state
in the Union. My wife had sent me just you know,
for working on this radio segment. It's a picture of
our families, you know, property tax statement, the statement of

(09:54):
all the different property taxes we are paying as a
family for our house, our house in Clovis. And it's
just boom boom, boom boom. This Clovis Unified. We have
Clovis Unified bond measures from two thousand, from two thousand
and four, from twenty twelve, from twenty twenty. Now we're

(10:18):
all still paying for refinancing of those loans of this
year and this year. This it's just again and we're
paying like layer after layer after layer after layer of
bond measures for Clovis Unified. And we've got State Center,
Community College, District prior bond measures for them that we're
also paying for. So they there's never an end, there's

(10:41):
never a sense of, hey, the taxpayers are already shouldering
the burden. They've got four existing or five exit whatever
it is. Existing bond measures that they are already still
paying for that have inflated property taxes within president Unified
Clovis Unified ever by this much. And the thing is,

(11:04):
any individual one of these taxes is not that great.
The state center bond measures tax rate would be twenty
dollars per one hundred thousand dollars of assess valuation of
a home. So if your home is worth three hundred
thousand dollars, you would pay sixty bucks in tax. If
your home is worth four hundred thousand dollars, you would

(11:25):
pay eighty bucks in tax. And in the grand scheme
of things, that doesn't seem like a lot, but it's
like every bit contributes, and all these things pile up
and pile up, pile up. You know. The measure e
folks who were pushing that, they kept trying to advertise
it by saying, look, it's only like a quarter of

(11:47):
a cent in sales tax. And the voters were just like, well,
we don't want to pay every individual single quarter of
a cent. That gets at it that you've got this
state county wide sales tax in this county wide sales Tex,
and that city sales Tex, and that city sales tex
City of Clovis is proposing a big jump in it's

(12:12):
sales tax to help pay for public works that'll be
on the ballot for Clovis citizens, and coming up. All
this stuff just builds up, and I feel bad for
these local governments because I think oftentimes their needs are
more legit. I mean I would, in general, like I

(12:32):
would be much happier to pay more in sales tax
to Clovis to help recruit more police and fire. Like
the city of Clovis is basically struggling with this because
the population of Clovis has grown drastically, the budget hasn't
kind of grown yet to meet it. We have a
need for more cops, et cetera, we don't have the

(12:55):
funding for it to match up with the growth that
the city has experienced. So they're proposing this increase sales
tax to he'll pay for this. Like if I wasn't
living in a state that was already massively over tax
with you know, massive California income tax and property taxes
and all this other stuff, I mean, that's the kind
of thing I'd be more open to voting for. I

(13:15):
think people would be more open to voting for something
like Measure E if it wasn't in this context of
so many other taxes glombing all over us, and now
we've got this tidal wave of bond measures. Now, when
we return, I want to talk about how so often

(13:37):
it doesn't seem to me that these bond measure proposals
are actually funding real needs. And I think this State
Center Community College District bond measure is yet another case.
That's next on the John Jrardy Show. The State Center
Community College District Board of Directors voted seven and nothing

(13:58):
yesterday to put a six hundred ninety eight million dollar
bond measure on the November ballot. By six hundred and
ninety eight million, what we actually mean is probably something
more like one point four billion that we will have
to pay so that State Center Community College District can

(14:19):
get seven hundred million dollars worth of benefit. That's how
bond measures work. Bonds are loans to municipal entities that
the taxpayers have to pay back with interest and with
interest rates where they are right now, we are basically
going to pay more in interest than we will pay

(14:41):
in principle if it is sort of typically structured a
thirty year loan with a repayment with interest rates set
it kind of prevailing interest rates. That's what we're going
to wind up paying. Now, the thing that annoys me
about local bond measures for school districts and community college districts.

(15:04):
And right now the context for why this is happening.
California has a statewide education bond measure that is going
to be on the ballot proposition too. It'll be ten
billion dollars for school districts, you know, K through twelve
school districts plus community college districts throughout the state. But

(15:24):
again it's it's always labeled as ten billion dollars. What
they mean is it's twenty billion dollars in taxes to
get ten billion dollars worth of benefit. Now, what's happening.
And this is the second time this has happened in
the last five years. This happened, this same thing was
going on in twenty twenty. Local school districts and local

(15:49):
states owner community college districts are putting bond measures on
the ballot for themselves, pretending, pretending like they're doing it
because there are all these grave needs that the school
district has, when really they're just doing it because they
want to get matching grant money. Okay, Proposition two is

(16:15):
structured such that your local school district can get a
bunch of money if you yourself fundraise it in the
form of a bond measure. So if your local school
district passes a bond measure for four hundred million dollars,
you might be able to get an additional four hundred
million dollars in state money from the Prop two proceeds.

(16:39):
And everyone just has to kind of all cross their
fingers together and hope that Prop two passes at the
state wide level and that your local bond measure passes
at the local level, and then everyone gets a bunch
of money, other than the taxpayers who get to lose
a bunch of money because they have to pay it
all in taxes. So the motive from these local school

(17:05):
districts and from the State Center Community College district, it's
not coming from some dire need, some dire exigency that
exists within Close Unified or State Center Community College or
President Unified or whatever. It's coming from. Well, there's this
money available out there from Prop to money, So we
got to pass a bond measure so we can get

(17:25):
our hands on it. Then we'll be rolling in the dough.
But you read like I read this piece from GV
wire written by Nancy Price, one of their journalists, and
this is the meeting in which the meeting Sorry, guys

(17:46):
going through puberty on the radio. This is the meeting.
It literally just did it again. This is the meeting
in which the school, the community college district board is
discussing approving putting this seven hundred million dollar bond measure
on the ballot, where they would be talking about what

(18:08):
kinds of things this would help fund, What what are
the needs that this is helping with. So the story
says they heard from some consultants about how much women
love this issue. Okay, great, Yeah, some political consultants said
this was more popular with women voters than with men voters.

(18:29):
And that's great because women are awesome and women are
so energized this election because of Kamala Harris. All right,
sounds good. Now there isn't though much discussion about like, well,
what are the needs that the community college district is

(18:49):
actually facing? And I go through this whole article. It
talks about some idea okay, another although the bond measure
would pay for some new construction the Center for Applied
Technology and Instructional Complex at Fresnes City College, new multi

(19:11):
purpose event and training spaces at Fresno City College's First
Responders Academy, an interdisciplinary classroom building and cafe at the
College College's West Fresno Campus, new student services at Close
Community College, and classroom and ag complexes at Reridley College.
But then they always say millions of dollars are needed

(19:31):
to upgrade existing buildings for new technology, electricity, and to
fix leaking roofs. So according to SCCCD Chancellor Carol Goldsmith,
we need so let me get this straight, because this
is this sounds so similar to Close Unified and Presnew

(19:53):
Unified when they announced there, you know, hundreds of millions
of dollars bond measures. You need a special seven hundred
million dollars bond measure, which really what we're talking about
for you then is one point four billion because you
would ask for matching funding from the state. So you
need one point four billion to deal with upgrading some tech.

(20:18):
Which why isn't upgrading tech like part of your budgetary
like line items. That's the thing that just happens. You
have to upgrade your tech pretty much every year upgrading
buildings for new technology electricity? What about electricity do you

(20:41):
need upgrading for? Is this just normal building maintenance to
fix leaking roofs? Again, this is this is ordinary building maintenance.
State Center Community College District has multiple very large campuses
throughout the San Joaquin Valley. Read the College, President City College,
New City College, It's going to be on West Fresno

(21:03):
Closes Community, all these different major, huge campuses. You don't
have the money for maintenance like that kind of ongoing
maintenance that that has to be Why do you need
an extra bond measure? And they talk about, oh, it
would help funding for all of these different projects, which

(21:26):
leads to me to ask two questions. If you started
these projects before you knew of this bond situation with
a state bond coming out, and then you're getting bond
money to support it, how did you start these construction
projects without knowing that this specific bond funding was going
to be available. So did you only start them with

(21:53):
the idea that this bond money would be available. No,
this bond, this bond funding is the result of the
teachers' unions being mad at Avin Newsom for not getting
enough money in the state budget because the state budget
is in it facing a deficit, so they negotiated with Newsom.
Newsom is supporting Newsom is not giving them as much

(22:13):
money in the state budget, but he's supporting this ballot
initiative to get more money for schools. State Center, Community
College District didn't know that this ballot initiative was coming
like a year ago, and yet they start all these
major construction projects. So if they don't have the money
for those construction projects, why do they start them. But

(22:34):
I think what's more likely is they do have the
money for these construction projects and they don't really need
this bond money. Same thing with Clovis Unified. They're belly
aching with their proposed bond measure. Oh well, we might
not be able to finish Clovis South. Why did you
start Clovis South if you didn't have a clear picture
of whether you had the funding to finish it. You

(22:57):
didn't know that this bond measure money was coming out
like a year and a half ago. Clearly you started
Clovis South a while ago. So you either do have
the money to finish Close South and you're kind of
bsing us, or if you didn't have the money. You
were totally irresponsible in the way that you got it started.

(23:19):
So I again just don't believe these school districts or
community college districts. I don't really believe they need this money.
I think they are putting forward these bond measures because
the money happens to be out there and they just
want to take advantage of it. And what they by
them take advantage of it, what they mean is take
advantage of us and our gullibility to vote for these

(23:41):
stupid bond measures again and again and again and increase
our own taxes for school districts and community college districts
that I'm just not convinced desperately need this money. When
we return, how transgender hormones are planned Parenthood's new big business?
Next on The John Jardy Show. This is a story

(24:02):
that I've been tracking and following before this article came out,
and I've talked about it a bit here. I've talked
about it a bit on Right to Life Radio. We'll
talk about some other stuff on Right to Life Radio.
Right to Life Radio every Saturday morning here on Power
Talk at nine am. It's on Power Talk Fresno. How

(24:24):
did planned parenthood become one of the country's largest suppliers
of testosterone. This is a piece from the Free Press,
and it talks with a number of people who were
what we call d transitioners. So these are people who
tried to transition from one gender to the other and

(24:45):
regretted it. And often many such people are in really
tragic situations where they underwent hormone therapy of some sort
or in some cases surgery, and and they are going
to have an extremely difficult time living as their actual
biological birth sex because of the somewhat unrepeatably bad impact

(25:12):
that the gender transitions had on their bodies, including the
hormone treatments from testosterone. For women, basically women who want
to transition, often what happens is that they get on
a regime of testosterone in order to have more testosterone
in their bodies and take on more masculine appearance and affect.

(25:37):
And I have talked about this a lot on the
show that and I genuinely believe this that when you
scratch the rainbow, you find green. That's my cheesy slogan
for it, but I think a lot of LGBTQ advocacy,
I really genuinely believe this is motivated by a desire

(26:01):
to profit from medical treatments for LGBT persons. I think
a lot of what is underlying the massive push for
transgender treatment in America is money. Surgeries for transgender persons

(26:22):
are very expensive and lucrative for the doctors, hospitals, etc.
That do them. Hormone treatments can be lucrative for the
providers who provide them. I will note the different approaches
you see, for example, between America and the United Kingdom

(26:46):
the United Kingdom. Healthcare provision in the United Kingdom is
run by the National Health Service. Okay, the UK does
not have a private sector healthcare industry. They don't have
private health insurance, they don't have private hospitals. The provision

(27:07):
of healthcare is run by the government in the UK completely.
So the profit motive. Now that I'm not saying that
that's all peaches and cream and that there's nothing wrong
with that setup or that it's a better setup than
the US necessarily, but it's different. And one of the
ways in which it's different when you have a government
run health system is that the profit motive is not

(27:31):
as stark. Okay, the profit motive is not as great,
and in the UK they were actually willing to follow
the research to realize, Hey, surgeries for transgender persons don't
actually have any net benefit for the people receiving. All

(27:55):
of our survey studies indicate that it does nothing actually
to improve mental health outcomes, and that in many cases
these are harmful and in various ways not really reversible.
So the United Kingdom basically banned various kinds of transgender
interventions except for experimental trials. So the United Kingdom has

(28:22):
for the most part banned various kinds of gender transition interventions.
That's a big deal. The United Kingdom, not not Estonia.
The UK, right one of the a very advanced, wealthy, liberal,

(28:43):
developed Western country. But in the United States we have
a profit motive associated with this. The government can't just
kind of snap its fingers and ban a certain kind
of medical procedure nationwide the way that that can happen
in the UK. And so what do you see, Well,

(29:05):
you see associates, associations of doctors still trying to say, well,
even though the evidence is kind of not great, that
there's a lot of long term benefit, but still we think, oh,
this is important, and well, you have all these doctors
making money directly seeing a profit motive to providing this
in a way that does not exist in the UK

(29:27):
to the same degree. Interesting huh. And this relates to
this story from the Free Press about Planned Parenthood and
their provision of transgender hormone therapy. So they're not doing
transgender surgeries, but they are providing hormones to persons who

(29:50):
want to be transgender. Here's a story by Jennifer Block
in the Free Press for Christina Heinemann. Situation felt urgent.
The seventeen year old needed treatment at Planned Parenthood, where
she knew she wouldn't be subjected to humiliating questions or
an unnecessary waiting period, or lectures or prying about her certainty.

(30:10):
But it wasn't an abortion she sought. It was testosterone.
Planned Parenthood was founded a century ago to promote birth control.
Today it's nearly six hundred clinics nationwide make it the
largest single provider of abortion, contraception, reproductive care, and sex
education in the US. I would dispute the term reproductive care,
but let's continue. It has also, in less than a decade,

(30:33):
become the country's leading provider of gender transition hormones for
young adults. According to insurance claim data in twenty five.
In twenty fifteen, around two dozen of their clinics began
offering the service. Now it's available at nearly four hundred
and fifty locations. Insurance claim information provided to the Free
Press by the Manhattan Institute shows that at least forty

(30:56):
thousand patients went to Planned Parenthood for this purpose last
year alone, a number that has risen tenfold since twenty seventeen.
The largest proportion, about forty percent, were eighteen to twenty
two year olds. Faced with her parents' skepticism, Heineman waited
to make an appointment for just after her eighteenth birthday

(31:17):
in November twenty twenty one, at the Planned Parenthood facility
in Hudson, New York. Some clinics offer hormones starting at
sixteen with parental approval, but as a legal adult, Heineman
wouldn't need their consent. That is an important thing to note.
Unlike with abortion for the moment, actual transgender interventions like
hormones or surgeries in California do require parental consent at

(31:42):
the moment. We'll see how long that goes. Records show
that a nurse practitioner asked about Heineman's identity and desires.
She noted about a boob a book, so it talks
about the really quite minimal levels of informed consent information

(32:05):
about long term harms, et cetera. We're involved in this
young woman getting testosterone treatments and the long term impacts
this has had on her health, especially when she realized like,

(32:26):
I don't want to live this way. I just want
to live as a woman again. And what I want
to focus on here is the profit motive. Now. I
want to bring to bear my personal understanding of this,
all right, Having started a small nonprofit clinic that actually

(32:49):
provides reproductive health care, Planned PARENTI provides not reproductive health care.
They're mostly just doing abortions and contraception, so to help
you not reproduce, not a lot of stuff to help
you if you actually want to have this baby. Planned
Parenthood very obviously patterns and shapes what services they offer

(33:15):
on the basis of what can make them money. They
offer prenatal care exams at their clinic in North Fresno,
where you have more people with private insurance orgo, you
can make some money. They don't offer prenatal care physits

(33:37):
for pregnant women et cetera. Pregnant women who want to
keep the baby, want to have checkups over the course
of their pregnancy. They don't offer that in Southresno at
the Fulton Street Clinic. Why well, because all the women
in South Reresno at the Fulton Street Clinic, even though
there is a dire need for the provision of prenatal care,
those women are all on medical and so Planned Parented

(33:57):
won't make money off of them. It takes up provider time.
Time is money. Providers are expensive. You gotta pay them.
It takes up exam room space. You're filling up this
exam room and this provider's time providing a service that
you can't get a good reimbursement for. With transgender hormone treatments,

(34:23):
you get a nice that you can get a profitable
reimbursement from the drug. You're providing this person with a drug,
and that makes money. This is why Planned Parenthood is
adopting this so rapidly, so quickly, across all four hundred
and fifty clinics. You know, the Planned Paranoide on Fulton
Street has been saying, oh yeah, we're gonna start doing

(34:45):
prenatal care for all these louringcomemoments. Oh years and years later,
they're still not doing it, but oh boy were they.
Johnny on the spot to provide hormone treatments. Why hormone
treatments make Planned Parenthood money. That's why Planned Parenthood has
jumped into this head and feet first. And again, this

(35:10):
is the basics of what I want to leave you, guys.
With hormone treatments, transgender surgeries. These things make money. And
whenever you look at whether it's some LGBT nonprofit, some
LGBT event, look at the people who are sponsoring it,

(35:30):
look at the kinds of entities that are sponsoring and
supporting it, you'll almost always see some kind of medical
entity who is providing either transgender hormone treatments or whatever.
The LGBT movement is being pushed to make doctors' money,

(35:52):
make pharmaceutical companies money. You scratch the rainbow and all
you will see is green and not just any money,
money that is often at the expense of the suffering
of the very people they purport to serve. When we return,

(36:13):
the school year has started, and I want to do
a brief appreciation of my wife and kids. Next on
the John Girardi Show. The school year has started at
the Girardi School. A home learning principal slash head of
discipline slash pe teacher slash Latin teacher, John Girardi has

(36:35):
been popping in for oversight and encouragement and all round
awesome teacher who's having an affair with the principal, Holly
Girardi is overseeing these incredibly bright little kids. So we've
got three kids doing school right now. We got fifth
grade Maddie, we got fourth grade Sophie, fifth grade Maddie

(36:58):
who's nine, fourth grade Sophie who's eight. Yes, she skipped
a grade. It's kind of what happens with homeschool is
that you get done with your work so soon that
it's like, well, we got to keep this kid busy.
If they're smart, they get done with their work soon,
and then you got to keep them busy. And all
of a sudden, you've skipped a grade. And then first
grade Jack, who is six. My two girls, fifth and

(37:21):
fourth grade, they're starting Latin and I'm teaching them Latin,
and it's just great. They're so excited for it. It's
interesting to them. It's going to give them this huge
leg up. As far as vocabulary and understanding grammar. Like,
I just got to say the way that California public
schools are kind of not doing so hot. I know

(37:44):
it's a sacrifice for families, but I really couldn't recommend
homeschool anymore. The opportunities for socialization, extracurricular activities that are
available to kids now that just were not available twenty
even twenty thirty years ago. It's such a great options.
The stuff they're reading is great, the quality of the
curriculum they can get is great. The funding you can

(38:06):
get from public charters to help pay for sports and
all kinds of things, piano lessons, it's really great. So
homeschooling highly recommended. I'm so proud of my wife and
my kids that'll do it. John girodies show, See you
next time on Power Talk