That quote comes from not-real-happy Mike Ruffin, the Durham county manager. He’s responding to the cavalier action taken by the county school board, which has ignored Ruffin’s budget allocation for the district and instead simply voted to ask for even more money. From the Herald-Sun:
Durham County officials reacted negatively Friday to the school board’s request for $5 million more than the county manager will recommend in school funding.
“That gap is not something I’m going to recommend passing on to taxpayers,” said Mike Ruffin, the Durham County manager. “I don’t think in this economic climate that’s the right thing to do. I tried to get the word out as best I could so that the school board would address it… They offered no solutions. They simply added, asked for more money and moved on.”
Ruffin said the school board passed up a chance to be a part of the solution and abdicated control of the situation when it voted Thursday night to eschew the superintendent’s recommended $650,000 cut in county funding. Instead, the board asked for $2.1 million more than the district’s base 2008-09 county appropriation.
By voting to request more money and, in essence, telling the county manager to get lost, school board members have acted more like the immature kids they’re supposed to be leading, than the adults that are supposedly in charge of policy.
