The following letter to the editor comes from Mt. Lebanon resident, Steve Diaz.
May 19 2011
To the Editor:
Re: High School Renovation and the Election
The results of the election this week confirm that despite the continuing use of nasty personal attacks and gang mentality by the incumbents, an open, honest evaluation of the high school renovation fiasco necessarily reveals a sloppy, inadequate, and prejudged rush through a complex project with no regard for the facts or legitimate public concerns. How embarrassing for the “officially” endorsed Republican candidates that an outsider, James Cannon, outpolled all of them, and the Democrat cross-filers as well. He beat all comers, incumbent and newbies, by a significant statistical margin. In the general election he has every opportunity to garner the top final vote, which should, by any fair and reasonable measure, make him the next president of the Mt. Lebanon school board.
The article in the Post-Gazette today underscores why James Cannon is so popular. First, the incumbent “officially endorsed” candidates are scrambling to do a complete volte-face. Mr. Kubit and Mr. Remely are quoted to the effect that many of the project elements as to which they articulated absolute support and commitment, such as renovations for the high school theatre and LEEDS certification, now are stated by these board members to be either not as economically viable or productive as they previously claimed without doubt (see the infamous flyer mailed to us by them at our own tax-paid expense). In fact, if they addressed such matters as seats and sound system in the theatre and other items of deferred maintenance (such as wiring or wireless upgrades and disability access), they would not need to spend anywhere near the scope of their planned project budget.
Second, they omit to mention how throughout the Act 34 public hearing process, these two, and indeed all of the incumbent school board members (save Mr. Fraasch, whom they bullied unmercifully), opposed and ridiculed ANY criticism of the plan that produced the calamitous bid results. Specifically, Mr. Kubit, Ms. Capucci and all the then incumbents who now seek re-election, loudly and consistently accused those who raised similar and other points of concern of “being against the children” and “not understanding” the needs they “had” to address. Who doesn’t seem to understand now?
Third, in an unbelievable exercise of hubris, the school board members yet seek to salvage as much of their discredited approach to school maintenance as possible (see the Post-Gazette this morning). Even now, after the petition of “The 4,000”, after the disastrous bidding, and after a primary election in which an outsider opposed to the program out-polled all the incumbents he opposed on the ballot, the board persists as if only some cutting and trimming will salvage their ill-conceived, vain, and wasteful project. We are supposed to accept that the “irreducible minimum renovation” can now somehow be reformed by the same clueless gang-that-couldn’t-shoot-straight in the first place. Pardon my candor, but I find it unlikely to be so.
Moreover, the school board persists in planning a high school renovation in a vacuum, pretending we do not also have a major, as yet unquantified, teacher pension funding obligation that will likely easily compete with or exceed the proposed cost of the White Elephant project the school board will not give up. The school board has given no accounting of how we will pay for both their grandiose spending on unnecessarily monumental building schemes and for the promised labor benefits we offered to secure the best teaching faculty possible. This from a school board that had done nothing to support the scholastic program even as our academic performance and standing has continuously and seriously deteriorated.
Finally, I object to the lack of accountability and responsibility. Why do none of the incumbents apologize to the opponents they savaged during prior public debate as they now proceed to incorporate many of the very suggestions the opposition offered before the project was finalized? Why do the incumbents, who were so strident in their “leadership” before, not accept any personal fault for the decisions they themselves made? It’s all well and good to blame the consultants, but who hired them and who took their advice while refusing to consider any criticism? The incumbent members of the school board had a clear field and made the policy choices that followed their own judgment, in the face of strong community opposition. Why does the school board fail to meet the No.1 priority of arresting and turning around our slipping academic program and why do they fail to accept any responsibility for it ? They don’t even talk about the academic record, let alone campaign on it. Now that the numbers are in, it is time for the same power brokers who want to lord it over this community by raising our taxes to unsustainable levels, to take “credit” for what they have “achieved”.
It is not good enough for failed decision makers to just posture a cosmetic change of direction. They must admit their failures and take responsibility for them. The members of the school board need to be adult enough to accept the failure of their policy and of their policy making process. It is time to step aside and let new leadership clean up. Not only those incumbents on the ballot, but the entire incumbent school board should resign to demonstrate good faith in their promise to look after the best interests of this community. As things stand now, no one has gained anything under the guidance of this school board; the only responsible course of action for them now is to go, not to sit tight and make new promises they can’t keep (or if they do “keep” them by whatever means, only spend us into oblivion when the bill comes due on the teacher pension fund).
Respectfully,
Steve Diaz
Mt. Lebanon
35 comments:
Um, I appreciate your enthusiasm for your candidate, but Mr. Cannon has approximately zero chance to "garner the top final vote". That honor, history and logic show, will go to one of the four candidates who will appear on both the Democratic and Republican lines. Mr. Cannon will battle Mr. Cooper for the final slot on the board (I'd make Mr. Cannon a very slight favorite at the moment).
And people who continue to cite the 4,000 signatures as evidence the community has rejected the board need to explain why Mr. Silhol (who generally opposed the school project) has been the only school board member to lose a reelection bid in either of the last two election cycles.--Neil Berch
Neil:
You may be right, but it may have more to do with being president and running for re-election at the same time.
If memory serves- the last 2 sitting school board presidents and running at the time of the November election were Walton and Silhol. Both were ousted from the board.
I'll stand corrected if Rodella was the president instead of Walton. He chose not to run.
The chain may even go back further to Ron Hoffman who just passed away.
Dick Saunders
Mr. Birch: I admit the possibility I could be wrong, as we all must in the premise of any democratic society. Nonetheless, respectfully, I note that you chose only to address some of the political conclusions I offered, but you do not address the underlying facts and circumstances. Only the election on November 8 will establish who the top vote getter may be, and you may be right, or you, like me, may be wrong about that. As to the facts, however, I realize that you do not challenge my premises because they are punctiliously factual and correct. it is the ultimate facts which will control the fate of the community. Our elected representatives have the duty to act on the facts --- and to take responsibility for the effects of the judgments they make. I invite you to sit down over a cup of coffee as I suspect deconstructing the situation with you would be both enlightening and entertaining--certainly challenging intellectually. I hope you will accept my invitation. Regards. Steve Diaz
Mr. Berch---If Mr. Silhol was wrong, and the 4,000 had no point, why are we stuck where we are now? And what about the future, and the teacher pension obligation, how will that lay down on "the rest of the story"? Steve Diaz
Neil, I'll ask you. Dan Remely is quoted in the Trib:
"With these numbers so far out of line, I am wondering why someone didn't come in and say, 'We have to shut down this project (direction).'
Who should be his "someone" be?
Celli? PJDick? The contractors? Their first and primary interests is making money for their companies. They're not saints, nor should they be.
The state? The Federal government? Both have enough money affairs of their own to worry about.
So who are the only people with no personal monetary gain from seeing it proceed with the authority to stop it?
In my opinion, it's the nine sitting board members! They didn't shut it down though they were given plenty of warnings which they chose to ignore or were confident in their minds- they knew better.
I'm not so sure I agree they should resign. But they should accept their shortcomings and be appointing a group to take over the reins. Perhaps the CAC if they still want to volunteer.
-Giffen Good
I'll respond to Mr. Diaz in more detail later (though whether Mr. Cannon will be the top vote-getter in November is hardly a matter of opinion; I'll be happy to put up $100 that says he won't vs. your $10 that says he will, with all proceeds going to the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank. What do you say?).
The larger point is that several folks are asking whether I think the school board has done a good job here. As someone who supports the high school project (but whose kids won't benefit from it; my last one will only be there long enough to sit through construction, just as he did at Washington!), I don't think they've done a good job at all. But that's not the question. The view I was offering is that it doesn't appear from the 2009 and 2011 election results that the Board majority has lost the community in any dramatic fashion. That's different from the question of whether they SHOULD have lost the community.
Finally, I think there's something to be said for the idea that Silhol lost because he was board president and thus more visible, but it may also have been his campaign style.--Neil Berch
Neil, the question for me isn't whether the board had, has or lost the community. We could argue that till the unicorns come home!
The point here is do we let the people that got us into this mess (and exactly who are they?) proceed witb finding a solution. ANd if they don't... what then?
I partially side with Mr. Remely. He admits that someone should have thrown on the brakes!
Where I part ways with him is that he was the brakeman on this this runaway train.
You and Steve can wager all you wish on the November outcome. Bottom line is the community will pay for junket.
- Giffen Good
Neil, couldn't agree with more on the Silhol campaign style.
He was a good guy in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong message.
-Giffen Good
Interesting thoughts Neil. Do you think Ed Kubit has lost the community because he was board president during most of the over-budget plan proceedings and that his name is firmly and singularly attached to the FAQ mailer?
Thus he'll bear the brunt of dissatisfaction from both sides come November?
- Giffen Good
Giffen: you make a good point. Kubit was the face of the board during the key moments, even though Posti is now President (I wonder if presidents get less blame/credit if they change so often). However, again, while it is mathematically possible for someone nominated by both parties in a cross-filing system to lose, that NEVER happens.
BTW, on a side note, PA is one of the few places that conducts elections with this bizarre cross-filing provision. Many other places (like when I lost a race for the Seattle School Board in 1987 by a much bigger margin than Elaine lost her Commission race!) enforce the non-partisanship of local elections by having them actually be non-partisan. In Seattle, for instance, everyone appeared on one ballot (for School Board, City Council, and even Mayor) without party labels. For each office, the top 2 candidates in the primary faced off in the general election. For those scoring at home, I came in 3rd in a field of 4 in my race (I was too far to the left, even for Seattle), and thus didn't make the general election.
Neil Berch, was that last comment from you? It was not signed.
Elaine
I was wondering since Goldman, a virtual unknown with no message beat Ed on the R ticket by a couple of votes and lost by what 39on the D ballot.
Ed could easily be odd man out!
- Giffen Good
If anyone is curious about the benefits of cross-filing, I built a simple statistical model based on the 2007 and 2009 primary and general elections for the Mt. Lebanon school board. Cross-filing is associated with getting an extra 400–1700 votes (= +1.3 ± 0.8 standard deviations).
For perspective, the difference in votes between the most and least voted-for candidates for the 2007 and 2009 general elections was 2700 and 1900, respectively. In other words, the cross-filing bonus may be enough to move a losing candidate to the top of the pack, and giving up the bonus may be enough to move someone who would have been at the top of the pack to the bottom.
(Note, however, that my model was a statistical model and not a causal model, so the above inferences hold only if we assume the differences associated with cross-filing were caused by cross-filing, which could very well not be true.)
Cheers,
Tom
Elaine: Sorry. It was indeed from me.--Neil Berch
Two school districts you might want to look at as examples of popular rebellion against the school board are West Mifflin and Keystone Oaks. In the former, there were 15 candidates for 5 seats, all 4 incumbents running for reelection lost, and a five person opposition slate won all five slots in both parties' primaries. The issue there was fiscal mismanagement and a circus atmosphere at board meetings.
In Keystone Oaks, the issue was school closings, and one of the incumbents only got 16% of the vote in a three-way race for one seat. That's popular insurrection.
The Mt. Lebanon story is far less dramatic at this point (and won't be a story at all if Mr. Cannon doesn't win in November).--Neil Berch
Tom: Your model is interesting and not that unexpected. However, the total number of votes received in the primary doesn't matter. It's an all or nothing, do you win the primary question. The strategic question that arises is whether cross-filing would have given Mr. Cannon any reasonable chance of winning the 5th Democratic nomination (ahead of Mr. Goldman). My guess is the answer is no, but there's no way to know (on the other hand, he had little to lose by trying).
In a related note, it should be noted (another sign of lack of insurrection) that the board incumbents got the three highest totals of votes among the cross-filed candidates. This is probably just due to better name recognition than Mr. Goldman and Mr. Cooper, but it does suggest (particularly with Cappucci getting the highest vote total) that the community is divided rather than in rebellion against the board.--Neil Berch
Neil,
A clarification: my model suggested that cross-filing represented a bonus in the general election, given that a candidate passed the primary.
Cheers,
Tom
Neil, I'm not sure any conclusions could be drawn on Cappucci's success as top vote getter.
Democrats tend to stick with democrats where as republicans historically don't.
Haven't delved closely into the break down of the numbers. Could it be that several hundred democrats just couldn't bear the thought of voting for republicans so they didn't get much from the democratic side?
And as we discussed a few comments ago, Ed was seen as the face of the over budget HS project by voters on both tickets. It was his FAQ that guaranteed the project would come in around $95 million.
- Giffen Good
Tom: Sorry, I read too quickly. Your numbers seem to make sense to me (though you're dealing with a pretty small N). I agree, however, with your suspicion about causality. Cross-filed candidates tend to be those who think they CAN win a spot out of both primaries, so they are probably more popular candidates across the board. Thus, cross-filing indeed wouldn't CAUSE the "vote bonus". Rather, it would be a mark of candidates likely to get more votes. I like the model, though!--Neil Berch
Neil,
This plot shows my motivation for taking cross-filing into account in my model. (Note that I've adjusted the votes for each election into z-scores to make the 2007 and 2009 results more comparable.)
As a group, cross filers tended to do better than single-party filers. Why they tended to do better we can't say; we haven't developed a causal model.
But we don't need a causal model to make predictions based on what we observe in a presumably unchanging system. So: Given the candidates' cross-filing status and their performance in the primary, what does my model predict?
year candidate m1p_2011_GENERAL_votes_z
2011 ELAINE L CAPPUCCI 0.747
2011 LAWRENCE MARK LEBOWITZ 0.533
2011 JAMES EDMUND CANNON –0.048
2011 SCOTT D GOLDMAN –0.294
2011 EDWARD KUBIT –0.309
2011 WILLIAM L COOPER –0.748
The number in the final column is the predicted total votes for the candidate in the 2011 general election, adjusted into z-scores.
Of course, if the underlying system that my model is predicting changes, these predictions could be way off. That said, for the 2007 and 2009 elections, my model explains about 70% of the observed variation in the general-election votes.
Cheers,
Tom
Cannon has a very good chance of getting in, considering he beat former president Kubit even though Republican Mary Birks wrote a letter telling people to vote against Cannon.
Moertel's statistics don't take into account the fact that Mt. Lebanon voters pay closer attention to school district happenings than voters in other places.
Voters from both parties are fed-up with the status-quo.
David Huston
Tom: Bearing in mind that your model has an N of about a dozen or so and that these are not even independent observations (votes for one candidate in an election trade off with votes for another), and further bearing in mind that we are probably boring the other readers and should take this offline (!), what do your coefficients represent? That's not clear to me, as I'm not sure what negative coefficients would mean (without further explanation). Are you suggesting Mr. Cannon will come in 3rd? It certain appears that you're suggesting that Mr. Cooper will come in last (and that's plausible for sure)--Neil Berch
Tom: I just took a different approach. I looked at the 2009 results all across Allegheny County. I looked at races for School Boards and local Councils where there were multiple seats at stake, where some candidates appeared on both ballots and others appeared only on one party's ballot. There were 58 candidates in those races who appeared on both parties' ballots. 57 of them won (I'd love to know the story behind the exception). Mt. Lebanon was a typical situation, where Mr. Oestergaard and Ms. Birks, the two candidates with both nominations, not only led the field but did so by wide margins. My conclusion, then, is that the four candidates on both ballots are safe (barring a personal scandal). The odd person out will be either Mr. Cannon or Mr. Cooper. Now, that's not to suggest that Mr. Cannon has to finish 5th or 6th (though I think that's most likely). If a groundswell of support allowed him to pass (for instance) Mr. Kubit, that would not be totally shocking. However, such a groundswell of conservative support would make it highly likely (almost certain) that Mr. Kubit (on both ballots) would outpoll Mr. Cooper (only on the Democratic ballot), thus making Mr. Cooper the odd person out.--Neil Berch
I take it all back. I just looked at 2007. Obviously, the fact that an exception to my "rule" occurred in Mt. Lebanon (with cross-filed candidate Walton losing to two Republicans and one Democrat) makes such an exception more likely in Mt. Lebanon in 2011. Maybe Mr. Huston is correct about Mt. Lebanon being different because of the level of attention people pay. The question then becomes whether 2011 will look like 2007 (where someone with both nominations lost) or look like 2009 (where the two people with both nominations, who may have been seen as less polarizing than other candidates, won by huge margins). I'm not sure Tom's regression model (which one could argue really has an N of 2--elections rather than candidates) can answer the question for us. However, the 2007 data point (I can't believe I forgot about that election) certainly reduces my confidence that all four "cross-filed" candidates are safe.--Neil Berch
Neil says: "...what do your coefficients represent? That's not clear to me, as I'm not sure what negative coefficients would mean (without further explanation)."
Tom says (earlier): "The number in the final column is the predicted total votes for the candidate in the 2011 general election, adjusted into z-scores."
Tom concludes (reasonably) that Neil is illiterate. Neil responds that he (really!) just has issues with multitasking.
I also have another question: did your model include any independent variables besides cross-filing status? I'm wondering if you could explain even more of the variation if you included an independent variable representing performance in the primary and perhaps a dummy variable representing incumbency status (again, you'd be better off if you had more degrees of freedom to play with).--Neil Berch
Neil,
The coefficients (negative or otherwise) represent the z-scores of the total predicted votes for a candidate in the 2011 general election. In other words, if you take all the candidates' vote counts and from each subtract their mean and divide by their standard deviation, you get a z-score for each candidate. A score of 0 represents that a candidate got the average number of votes, a –1 represents one standard deviation less than the average number of votes, and so on. In short, it's a scale-invariant way of representing variation among quantities. The key point is that there is a linear relationship between the original vote counts and their z-scores such that higher z-scores represent more votes and thus you can sort by z-scores as you would sort by votes.
Anyway, all I'm saying is that by using a statistical model, I can make a slightly less guess-y guess and perhaps avoid some of the cognitive biases inherent in purely gut-based guesses. It's still a guess, but this guess is based on a model that lets us make some quantitative predictions about the relative strength of the cross-filing bonus when compared to a strong showing in the primary, which we will need to make inferences about Mr. Cannon's predicament: Not having access to the cross-filing bonus, is he doomed in the general election?
The model, fueled by the evidence of the last two school board elections, suggests that he is not doomed, that his strong showing in the Republican primary is sufficient to place him in the middle of the pack, even without cross-filing.
Cheers,
Tom
Neil: You continue to focus on electoral projections, interesting but more the fiddle than the fire. The true issue before us all is how to finance this school district and on that score, the school board members haven't a clue. In fact, they continue to ignore the other elephant in the room, the pension funding problem. How can they go on discussing the small matters on which they focus (shall we rearrange the cafeteria? How about the deck chairs on the Titanic?). No the true issue is the ability of the current board members to know how to make responsible decisions. Mr. Remely couldn't keep the parking lot from falling into Cochran Road (should he have?), so how can we expect him -- and the others who so badly missed the mark on the renovation - to deal responsibly with the matter going forward? This board has failed to exercise competent oversight, and for that, they should resign. If they choose to stay, wouldn't you like to hear from them some intelligent discussion about how they plan to pay for a White Elephant monumental building scheme and the teacher pension obligation? In the real world, you can't have one without the other. So, let's not play rhetorical games about why the incumbents must win the election by historical analogy (however flawed it may be), but let's focus on the current issues and the fact that our "leaders" are still clueless as to the urgent need to hold all of our desires and obligations in balance. If you had appointed this "committee" I suspect you might have dismissed them if they were responsible for your own money (come to think of it--they are!).
All these calculations, modeling, z-scores? There is no way to factor in what may occur in the real world.
Should the project be reduced in scope to some point that a large percentage of HS proponents feel betrayed, the incumbents will lose big!
If the board tries to ram a $120,000,000+ project thru the 4,000 petitioners are going to rebell at the polls. And then there are the variables no one or no formula can predict. The economy, unemployment and candidates marketing strategies.
All are unmeasurable and unpredictable. That's why you have exceptions to the rule like Walton's loss.
- Giffen Good
Steve, I'm not sure I agree with your suggestion that the school board members resign for several reasons.
First, who would replace them and the battle over replacements won't do anything to advance the high school project or save money.
On the other hand not one board member or administrator has the backbone to stand up and take responsibility for this fiasco! The buck stops somewhere and I'm thinking it stops with the people that had the final say on floating bonds, approving schematics and picking tile colors.
If they don't soon accept responsibility, admit they're clueless and ask for professional help (CAC) I'll be joining you in calling for their resignations.
Dick Saunders
Steve-
I take my previous comment back about your call for resignations.
I just cruised on over to Posti's Center Court blog and its like deja vu. Instead of the this school's ready to fall down or blow up (pick your catastrophe du joir) we're now going to get the full Tomorrowland marketing tour.
In the video you'll visit an actual representation of a 21st century classroom... right down to the color detail of the floor! Amazing!
Residents act now, rush right out and plop down $127,000,000 or so on a couple hundred of 'em! You'll be glad you did!
Amazing, they're going to try the same schtick again!
Dick Saunders
PS: Isn't funny that the 21st century classroom fits so well in a 1972 era building!!!!
Giffen Good,
Of course the future is uncertain, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make useful inferences about it. The world we live in is governed by physical laws that are unchanging and social systems that change only slowly; thus when we make inferences based on the premise that the world of tomorrow will behave much like the world of today, we are more likely foresee future outcomes than when we hold up our hands in the face of all the “unmeasurable and unpredictable” events that might make our predictions wrong and, for fear of error, fail to use the evidence before us to make predictions at all.
You offer the Walton loss in the 2007 election as an example of how reality can defy prediction, but, using the evidence available after the 2007 primary, that outcome shouldn’t have been surprising. Even my simple model, back-predicting the 2007 election, puts Walton on the edge of not making the cut:
year candidate sbdf_GENERAL_votes_z
2007 ELAINE L CAPPUCCI 1.93
2007 SUE ROSE 0.67
2007 FAITH ANN STIPANOVICH –0.40
2007 EDWARD KUBIT –0.42
2007 CAROL J WALTON –0.49
2007 JAMES FRAASCH –0.78
2007 RENE GARSON –0.85
Yes, models are imperfect. Yes, predictions can be wrong. But predictions based on reasonable models are often surprisingly accurate. And, while it’s likely that even those predictions will miss the mark, it’s less likely that they will miss it by a mile.
Therefore, when my model, crude though it is, puts Cannon squarely in the winners circle, I’m more inclined to believe that he will win a seat on the school board than I was before I did the math.
If I had to place a bet today, I’d bet on Cannon being on the school board.
Cheers,
Tom
Here is the link to the
Video of 21st century classroom in the 1972 building
Tom I never said Walton's loss was unpredictable, in fact based on having lived thru that period, Walton's loss was very much predictable.
Statistical evidence or not. Walton bored the brunt of the Sablegate affair, rightly or wrongly and so lost.
I wasn't trying to diminish your evidence only pointing out that unforseen events could have a huge impact on the outcome. As could a brilliant campaign plan!
Actually I'm surprised how close my seat of the pants feeling and your predictor align. Without the math, I'm betting also Cannon wins a seat if there is no major stumble in his run.
Dick Saunders
Steve: You make a good point. I got all excited about my geeky discussion with Tom, and that may have hijacked your thread. I will respond in the next day or so to the substance of your "ought" argument. Meanwhile, to conclude the empirical discussion from my perspective, my initial call (at the top of this thread) was that Cannon was a slight favorite to win in November. Tom's analysis, plus the reminder about the Walton exception, have convinced me that he's more than a slight favorite (though maybe not a sure thing).--Neil Berch
Neil
As I recall Alan Silhol was not "generally" against the high school project. Rather he was "generally" against how much was being proposed to spend on the high school project. As I recall Mrs. Posti only had 18 more votes than Alan Silhol had. I don t know why he lost the election that year but he was very close to Mrs. Posti in terms of votes. Sue Dixon
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