The amount of home sales in New London are very few in the past months, while other town’s home sales fill multiple columns of listings. The school budget process of hard lobbying for additional funding continues, which previously sold education-minded taxpayers like me on the claim that the magnet school investment of hundreds of millions of dollars would be the one key to turning around the city's vacant home sales and improving its overall financial direction. It is not happening.

Enrollment numbers may be up because parents are driving their children to the magnet programs from towns many miles away. The gasoline is a more acceptable travel expense, apparently, than buying a house in New London. Slow home sales show the failure of the magnet schools to deliver on the promise to the taxpayers that the increase in vacant home sales would occur and increase the grand list.

What this latest lobbying process fails to comprehend is that the promise of this return from the magnet school program must be demonstrated before taxpayers will accept approving any extra funding to support future education increases.

Jeff Suntup

New London