 My name is Michael Nolan, and I am appearing here on behalf of the Yolo County Taxpayers Association. The Taxpayers Association has never opposed a partial tax before, but it does now against major H. And there's a few reasons why. Let's just look at the arguments in favor of it. The idea is, by the proponents and the school board, is that it's necessary to keep the school district the way it is, and that the state is short-changing our schools. The problem with that is that we have a partial tax that has risen to now $533. The school board wants it to raise it to $620, and to add a cost-of-living increase, calibrated to the Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan districts. Ten years ago, in 2008, the partial tax was $166. The increase came because of the state budget crisis. And at that time, a number of partial taxes were adopted because it was argued it was needed for a temporary measure. It was an emergency. And now we're told that the emergency is now systemic, that we're always going to be short. What it reminds me of is the people that we know who get sick, go to the hospital, they get medication, they get pain medication. Then they're released, they go home, they're cured, and they're still hooked on the pain medication. In this instance, you have to look at it, that the district has become hooked on partial taxes, and it's a bad policy for the district to rely so heavily on special taxes. So I would say that the amount, as I said, was $620. It's calibrated to increase every year according to the CPI in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The problem with that is that if, say, we just, those areas, L.A. and San Francisco, have 3% inflation, will have over a $750 partial tax before the end of this eight years. However, we could easily, those areas easily could have a jump in inflation. And I remember double-digit inflation, and back in the 1970s, L.A. and San Francisco had 15%, 16% increases. Are we willing to pay that? Well, the problem is the school board is, a majority of the school board is on record saying that they favored a $750 partial tax. And one member argued strenuously for a $960 partial tax with the CPI. So the automatic increase, and if you doubt me, read your sample ballot, read the impartial analysis of the county council, where they say that this partial tax shall increase every year after the first year. But the effect of this then has to be what kind of school district do we want? If we pass major age, we're locked in for eight years. The programs that have been adopted, that they're financed by it, can't be changed or modified. And a good example, though, of the arguments and favors, they often point to the foreign language component of our schools. And so what a world-class program we have. Well, we have five. We teach five languages. We go from years one through six, including Japanese, Mandarin, German, French, and Spanish. My problem, though, was a couple of years ago, Spanish, too, they couldn't find a teacher. The school board was looking for anyone who could, and they eventually hired just someone who spoke Spanish and gave them an emergency credential. And I would thought that if we were going to have a quality program, that wouldn't happen. The same goes with French, where I have a kid in the French language who, when they had only when they had substitute teachers, did they find out, oh, how to actually properly pronounce the French language. Because in one instance, the teachers are teaching non-standard French. So I'll just put it this way that I think if you look at the major carefully, you'll find that you'll want to think twice, send it back to the school board, ask them to make some hard decisions, calibrate our funding with the new formula by state government, and then tell us what we actually need to make our schools what we hope they should be. Thank you.