Whaddya mean you spent your lunch money at the 7-Eleven?

No, no, not me. I always spent my lunch money on lunch.

As I remember it, we used to get lunch money every Monday for the coming week. 75 cents bought some kind of casserole, a vegetable, maybe a half cup of ice cream with a flat wooden thing that looked nothing like a spoon but was called one anyway. The food wasn't great, it wasn't awful, but compared to $3.75 all at one time, well.... it's easy enough to see how one might spend $3.75 on things other than a casserole with instant mashed potatoes on top. Especially if one could get replacement lunch money by blaming an anonymous mean kid for swiping Monday's $3.75.

So what's this have to do with Morrisville? Surely we don't need a tax increase because lunch money was spent on other than lunch.

In 2004, by a 4,062 to 896 vote, Morrisville residents approved a $5.7M General Obligation bond referendum that went something like this:

Shall the order adopted on July 26, 2004 authorizing not exceeding $5,700,000 PUBLIC SAFETY FACILITIES BONDS of the Town of Morrisville, North Carolina for the purposes of providing funds, with any other available funds, for acquiring, constructing and equipping police station and fire station facilities, including, without limitation, the acquisition of any necessary equipment and furnishings, all to provide public safety services within and without the corporate limits of said Town, be approved?

Ok, that's clear. $5.7M for combined police and fire stations and whatever else was needed to equip them. Chairs and maybe some communication gadgets and special garage door openers and such. Get our firefighters out of the old, in-the-way station #1 near the RR tracks. All good. All good. Counting on fingers here.... 2005, 2006, 2007, and a bit. 3 1/2 years. Miss the grand opening for the new public safety facility did you?

Well...... the design for the combined facility was higher than $5.7M. A lot higher. So the town used the bond money to buy the Stewart Engineering Bldg on Town Hall Dr instead. It's right next to what used to be the police station and adjacent to the Chamber of Commerce. No more Stewart Engineering. The space has been converted into a Public-Safety-Planning-Engineering-Inspections HQ. (Morrisville has skilled planners, we do, we do. But I wouldn't expect them to respond to a 911 call.) There's no room for any fire trucks or firefighters at PSPEI HQ. Fire station #1 is still old and in the way and now the money's been spent. Oops. Reckon we can tell people a big mean kid took it and we need some more?

No to the first part (that would be dishonest) and apparently yes to the second. That's one of the reasons your taxes are going up. A new fire station will run somewhere in the neighborhood of $3M. Ouch.