Longmeadow must reject the dividers.

The ferocity of opponents' efforts to prevent Longmeadow from accepting $34 million grant from the state to be used to re-build LHS is truly alarming. Trying to get a handle on the substance of the opposition's argument was easy, they have no substantive argument. All of their seemingly legitimate questions and concerns were clearly and definitively dealt with during a very comprehensive and transparent process that began in 2007. What they do have is the will to say absolutely anything that might confuse enough low information voters to derail the new high school project without regard for the financial consequences to the town's tax payers.

After all of Mr. Wojcik's and Mr. Fregeau's and Mr. Gold's and Mr. Moran’s arguments were thoroughly disproved, the folks with the ironic group names ("A Better Longmeadow" and Citizens for Responsible Government") have settled on one last ditch argument; a conspiracy.

Since actual evidence of a conspiracy doesn't exist, these militant anti-school residents have decided to employ some old fashion misdirection. Arguments about real costs and state funding processes are gone, replaced by out of context excerpts from correspondence between the MSBA and Longmeadow's School Building Committee. You do have to admire their nerve; taking letters that essentially prove they are wrong and simply pretending that they support their disproven claims. The letters in question, which have been and are publicly available, and which have been thoroughly discussed and referenced by advocates of the project in public, actually prove that the MSBA would have preferred renovation if it could be done well enough for less. These letters also reveal that the MSBA experts, not the town's, inspected the facility and determined that a rehab would be too costly and not sufficient to guarantee the building's long term viability.

The MSBA, though its own independent inspection and analysis ruled out state funding for any rehabilitation. This indisputable fact makes it perfectly clear that a NO vote on Tuesday could not possibly save Longmeadow tax payers ONE THIN DIME! In the absence of state money from the MSBA there is absolutely no doubt that repairing the high school would cost more than the $44 million we'd be paying if the voters say YES on Tuesday to a brand new, 21st Century high school.

So you see, the opponents aren't defending tax payers. If they succeed tax payers will pay more for less. They are essentially culture warriors who have convinced themselves that any money for schools is part of a socialist conspiracy that must be stopped at all costs, literally and figuratively. They are the Glenn Beck devotees among us, if you will. The fact that some of the new high school project's most visible supporters are VERY conservative Republicans, many of whom have opposed overrides in the past, has completely escaped these folks' notice.

No matter what happens on Tuesday, this town needs to have a serious conversation about how we govern ourselves. The leaders of this insane, anti-school, anti-tax payer crusade have to be taken to task and removed from any positions of authority in our town government. It would be a bit more understandable if the override in question was really going to cost tax payers more than the alternative, but the clearly established fact that Longmeadow's taxpayers will pay MORE if we reject the state's $34 million grant moves the opponents' argument from bad but understandable to bad, stupid, and counter-productive. In times like these Longmeadow absolutely cannot afford stupid.

Vote YES on Tuesday and reject any candidate who hasn't been willing to stand up and call a spade a spade. Its time Longmeadow dumps its dead weight and moves forward with seriousness of purpose, integrity, and most importantly, intelligence regarding its precarious fiscal challenges.

A YES vote will not only save us on our property tax bills, it may actually save our town from fiscal suicide at the hands of the former and current leaders whose incompetence put us in a fiscal bind in the first place.

Jerold Duquette