A vote for Gillespie in race for Bentonville school board

I am voting for Amy Gillespie for the Bentonville School Board Zone 2 seat because in the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette dated Sept. 4 she was quoted as saying, “I want to fight for Bella Vista families. I keep hearing that Bella Vista families have felt like an afterthought for years now. And that’s not OK. I want someone who’s going to consider us when they make decisions.”

In a nutshell, that does it for me and in that statement she does separate herself from her opponent Brent Leas.

With regard to her statement about Bella Vista being an afterthought in Bentonville School Board decisions, I think Wally Sheldon said it best many years ago in an open forum when he said, “Bella Vista is the cash cow for Benton County.” We pay our fair share of school taxes, but we have only one small school built within our city limits. Almost 3,000 of our kids have to get on a bus about 6:15 every morning to attend classes in other cities.

School business is the biggest business in Arkansas. Approximately 80 percent of our property tax dollars go toward public education. We pay the taxes, but we don’t get the school buildings built within our city limits. The Bentonville School Board keeps using the excuse that we don’t have flat land to build on, but that is not true. We now have the east half of Berksdale Golf Course that we don’t know what to use it for. We don’t need six or seven golf courses. No city of our size does. We do need to turn one of the golf courses into a world-class, premiere course and let two or three of the others be for clunkers like me.

To consider the need to have Amy Gillespie elected to the Bentonville School Board, please refer to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article dated Aug. 27 titled “West High School Stimulates Centerton Growth.” The article gives statistics how schools have increased home prices in Centerton, Bentonville, Gravette and Pea Ridge. It also shows that our golf courses in Bella Vista don’t increase property values like schools do.

To have schools built within our city limits will increase sales and property tax revenues for the city of Bella Vista. As stated before, we are already paying the second-highest school tax in Arkansas, we are just not getting our share of school buildings.

School Board member Brent Leas has rarely ever stood up for Bella Vista. He has almost always gone along with what Bentonville and areas east and south of Bentonville wanted.

During the 2013 millage campaign the Bentonville School Board held a public open forum at Cooper Elementary School in Bella Vista. During the public comment segment of the meeting I asked the chairman of the meeting, Brent Leas, if I could speak. He said, “No.” You don’t really want to tell a former Green Beret he can’t speak. That’s probably not going to fly. I spoke.

JIM PARSONS

Bella Vista