Swantopia!

Hey, everybody - I just read today's edition of The Toledo Blade, and guess what: the community of Swanton is apparently untouched by today's economic woes!

Wow! Who woulda thunkit?? (with apologies to Hooda . . . )

That is the only explanation I can think of, for their school board to give their teachers a 3.7% raise this year and a 4.1% raise the next year.

Yup - must be a charmed place indeed, to be able to shuck out that many taxpayer dollars, with banks failing all around us, the stock market in the bidet, and unemployment rates of around 10% in the county at large. Must be the laws of economics simply do not apply to the good citizens of the Swanton Local School District.

Now I understand their clever ploy of allowing people to refer to the area as "Swantucky", and even benefiting from tee shirt sales that say the same. They WANT everyone to dismiss them as ignorant dolts, so that they can keep all of this prosperity to themselves!

Well, I say we foil their snarky little plan - let's all move into the Swanton school district! Yeah! Let's snap up all of those houses in foreclosure, and empty commercial buildings in town!

Only, don't bother moving to the area if you've got kids. According to statements by one board member in that Blade article, the school district is going to be in the tank in just a couple of years because of this generous teacher contract, so the education itself is bound to suffer when more teachers and programs have to be dumped in order to balance the books.

Say. . . didn't the same thing happen out there a few years back? I seem to recall the Swanton system being the highest paid group in the county . . . until they went into fiscal caution, and cut people and programs left and right.

Hmmm . . . maybe we'd best wait a bit before we settle down over there. Sounds like it could get ugly again. Perhaps that "Swantucky" moniker remains appropriate after all.