Mehlville Group Gives Rockwood Residents Some Advice: 'Attack'

“Attack them head on.”

That was the advice provided Sunday by Rich Franz, of Mehlville, who was part of a contingent of Mehlville School District residents who attended the inaugural meeting of Concened Patrons of Rockwood (CPR), a group seeking to hold the Rockwood School District administration accountable to the public.

"District officials are often arrogant, and typically believe that you owe them your money," Franz told the CPR group.

Franz is a founding member of the anti-tax group, dubbed Mehlville Community Taxpayers Association. He also ran for and won a seat on the Mehlville school board in April.

Sunday's CPR town hall meeting included about 35 participants who met at the Hidden Valley Ski Resort in Wildwood. The meeting was organized by Rockwood resident Dennis Broadbrooks in response to districtwide criticism of Rockwood’s hiring practices and finances.

Attending the meeting were three Mehlville residents, including Franz, who lent moral support and gave advice on how to organize a grassroots approach to matters of importance to Rockwood taxpayers. The Mehlville representatives were among a group of activists who campaigned against an 88-cent tax increase in Mehlville that voters rejected in November.

Ken Meyer, of Mehlville, explained how local activists defeated the tax increase. He said the group got the word out in Mehlville by first having a town hall meeting. "Five former school board members became involved, and we just hammered away,” he said.

Meyer said Mehlville justified the call for a tax increase by saying teachers and administrators were getting less take-home pay and that health insurance costs for their dependents went up. The other half of the increase was to have been used to increase the district's reserves. "They will back at the trough soon," he said.

After the Mehlville tax increase proposal failed, Meyer said teachers and staff didn’t receive pay raises. He said a proposed new middle school that was “desperately needed,” according to a district survey, has disappeared from the district’s agenda. Both Meyer and Franz said the number of employees and the revenue to pay them has decreased through attrition since the tax plan failed.

Franz, who writes , encouraged the Rockwood group to organize and focus on publicizing their efforts and finding candidates to seek positions on the school board.

A third Mehlville resident, Greg Frigerio, said a former Mehlville superintendent was close to becoming one of the highest paid in Missouri at $186,000 with a proposed $44,000 raise in 2010. The superintendent turned down the raise and has since retired.

"We need to put an end to the insanity. You are the owners of the district. Taxpayers keep the district going,” he said. “Boards sometime forget that.”

He called the typical tactic used by district’s "educational cartel," was to instill fear that students are not going to get good education. "The $24,000 per student invested by the City of St. Louis doesn’t guarantee an education, does it?"

Frigerio said a common rationale for tax increases is to keep teachers in the district.

"But teachers aren’t going anywhere,” Frigerio said. “We researched it, and the average Missouri teachers' experience is 13 years. There's really nowhere for them to go, and there's a bunch of great young teachers just graduating who need jobs."

Frigerio said his main concern is that 75 percent of a district's funds go to salaries, pensions and benefits.

“This is no longer the 80s, and it's bull that districts can't be run like businesses,” he said. “It’s your money. My eyes got open last year. The board couldn't care less about your money. Times are bad for everybody. Until you vote every tax increase down, it's just more money they get."