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Page 4 · column 4 of 9 · from the scan, no model involved
To the editor
“Hobson’s choice” is an old expression which came into the English language because of the practice of Thomas Hobson who hired out horses from his stable in Cambridge, England, during the 1600’s. Hobson required every customer to take the horse nearest the door, regardless of the animal’s condition. And so the expression “Hobson’s choice” came to mean a choice without an alternative; the thing offered or nothing.
The expression “Hobson’s choice” seems to have died out in Rappahannock County but the practice of old Tom Hobson has not. School superintendent Estabrook has now revived it.
The superintendent offers the taxpayers of Rappahannock, through our supervisors, the choice of “buying in” on a new basketball “superdome” for a lot of money or of “buying in” on a different basketball “superdome-’' fer even more money. THe appears feTbe HeHin(<IHi supervisors, apparemagr ■ with the support of the present School Board, ‘The choice of building or not building is really no longefc yours to make.” (“Enough is enough,” he says.) “Your choice is to spend a lot or spend even more.”
So Estabrook, with his board, insists that we “buy in,” ie. commit to the project, by putting a $63,534 architect’s fee in this year’s school budget when neither ' the School Board nor the Board of Supervisors has formally and officially approved any building in the first place!
The “Hobson’s choice” would be to saddle the county for 20 years with an additional yearly debt service on either $836,475 or on $1,303,777 (at five percent, $83,646 or $130,376 the first year). A sizeable amount to be added to all future budgets for 20 years by this one budget decision, of course.
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