An unfortunate circumstance of timing

Barely a week has passed since the ax dropped on Polk Elementary, and yet there it was, bigger than life on the front page Wednesday morning. The brand new Educational Leadership and Support Center.

“NEW DIGS,' proclaimed the headline. Chutzpah, in all caps.

Jim Croce warned that you don't tug on Superman's cape, spit into the wind, etc. I've learned that you don't criticize the Cedar Rapids' School District's $44 million, 169,000 square-foot administrative headquarters. It's frowned upon in district leadership circles. You become a hack non grata very, very quickly.

I understand. Every public official wants his or her decisions to be made in a very comfy vacuum, and judged forever on the merits at the moment of conception. Then, our leaders want those decisions to fly away and never come back. Drop us a Christmas card, perhaps, but, please, don't come back.

The hard truth is that past decisions are often pulled back into the spotlight by present decisions or new conditions. It is, as the superintendent suggests, “an unfortunate circumstance of timing.” Just ask the City Council, which catches hell daily for its past, singular decisions, such as building a $49 million central library.

At least when the library dust settles, we'll have a facility that everyone, especially children, can use. At some point, the value of the services derived by the public will exceed the cost of bricks and glass. With tens of thousands of people using the library, that point will come sooner than its critics might admit.

But at what point does the leadership and support center pay us back? The district's finance guru says its savings and efficiencies can't really be quantified. Too bad. Better yet, when does the public value gained by the new digs exceed what the community lost through the closure of Polk?

“Apples and oranges!” the district insists. Unrelated. But the process that led directly to Polk's closure began with a laserlike focus on two core issues - declining enrollment and crumbling facilities. One reason schools had to close, we were told, was that the district lacked the money to cover all the needed repairs and upgrades.

One reason for that gap, I'd submit, is that the district sank $30 million in SILO-backed bonds into its new headquarters. Slice it any way you like, but those are apples and apples. Still, once the administration building became a hot issue in the closure debate, the infrastructure argument vanished. Odd.

What won't vanish anytime soon is the persistent notion that the new digs symbolize misplaced priorities.