To the editor:

There are 698,488 reasons to vote “no” on the Mehlville School District’s proposed 88-cent tax-rate increase.

That is the cost of the 3-percent pay increase for “most Mehlville administrators.” I am sorry but what taxpayer in this community cannot live on a yearly salary of $110,000? That was the previous year salary for an elementary school principal. Unbelievable.

Monsanto declared another round of layoffs. The teachers in a Belleville, Ill., area school district recently approved a contract that will result in pay cuts for roughly 40 percent of the teaching staff of about 50 teachers due to the restructuring of their insurance benefits. And what does the Mehlville school board do? It provides a 3-percent pay increase, allows the superintendent to increase his salary to cover his spouse’s health insurance and proposes a 88-cent increase to the tax rate.

This board is completely out of touch as to what is actually happening in the real world. And for the record, the last time the Mehlville tax levy was increased was the year 2000, not 1980.

Greg Frigerio

Concord