To the editor:

I have recently seen more groups step up to raise money for school stadiums.

If you haven’t followed the seven-year attempt to rebuild the Tipp City football stadium I will update you. The property is owned by the City, rented by the school. Instead of following the peoples wishes and building a stadium at the high school certain officials, (city and school), pushed to keep it in the park. Needless to say, some donors backed away.

From the start the fundraising organization has never had the money upfront to do any work at the stadium. They have in my opinion pushed the school and the city to pay for things at the stadium to get the public interested and involved.

The organization has taken out loans to do some of the work at the stadium. Those loans, per the organization, were acquired by using the donor forms some signed for multiple years of donations as collateral. Any money coming in now through these donors is going to pay off the loans. Any money through fundraising is going to pay off the interest on the loans.

Most of the work done has been out of the taxpayers’ pockets. There have been a multitude of checks written by the school and the city of taxpayer money to fund this stadium. The stadium bleachers that were just put up were done by the school. The school board went back and took out a loan against the last levy passed, the levy they promised if passed would take care of school buildings and not the stadium. However, due to safety issues that were not going to get addressed by this fundraising group the school had to take taxpayer money again to fix what this organization has not.

All these years this organization has been going before the City and the school to say those entities were not responsible for the stadium this group was. They are now being sued by a donor and through an e-mail sent to the school they have let the school know it is the school’s problem.

I would encourage every school district to write a policy if they currently don’t have one. While donations are appreciated it is of upmost importance that we as taxpayers do not let the school and city cover for these expenses that organizations say they are responsible for.

Kathy Bone

TIpp City