School’s Car Sale No Cause for Alarm

We have 135 people running for governor, and we’re antsy about used-car salesmen setting up shop in a high school parking lot?

What are they offending? Our sense of propriety? Goofed-up priorities?

To the contrary. What better captures the state of things than to convert the high school grounds to a car lot for a few days? It speaks to the importance of having some really nice wheels to cruise around in, while underscoring that schools are short of money and will take it anywhere they can get it.

Bake sales are nice, but when a company will pay you $7,500 just to use your empty parking lot to move product ... well, it’s the American way.

San Clemente High School Principal Charles Hinman wasn’t making any apologies for accepting the offer, nor should he. He’s not the reason California schools are underfunded and constantly on the lookout for dough. His school district has cut its budget 10% because of statewide cuts.

I wonder how many years away we are from corporate naming of schools. Home Depot High School at San Clemente has a nice ring to it.

Sounds crazy? That’s what people said about naming the college football bowl games.

Michael Korich understands these things. He’s the marketing director of a company in Lake Elsinore that promotes festivals, carnivals and off-site car sales. That led it the last few days to San Clemente High School, whose premium location seemed perfect for a couple of Orange County used-car dealerships that thought some South County business would be just what the doctor ordered.

Korich lined up the deal, paid the school and figured win-win.

He says it should be a no-brainer. He’s got a daughter in Fullerton High School, and her teachers have complained about shrinking budgets, he says.

“Think about it,” Korich says, “with Gray Davis, how many cutbacks

Korich says he’s mystified that anyone would complain, as some residents did, about using the parking lot for car sales, even with the attendant hoopla, as long as the sales put money in the school’s account. The complaints didn’t kill the idea, but led to the city banning the use of airborne promotional balloons, he says.

“I don’t understand that thought process of not letting balloons up,” Korich says. “They say they want to keep the small-town atmosphere, but I would think if something would support the schools

He says balloons create a more festive environment and cause curiosity seekers to wonder what the heck is going on over at the school. Once they get there and buy a car, Korich points out, the city pockets sales tax revenue.

Not to mention that the crowds might well drift into town and spend more money.

In a state that’s doing a lot of thinking outside the box these days, the used-car-sales-in-the-school-parking-lot idea sounded pretty good to Korich.

It hasn’t worked out that way. Korich was, to put it mildly, a little downbeat when I talked to him late Friday afternoon. “This weekend, we’re basically dying,” he lamented.

California ought to be renamed Schizophrenia.

We get jazzed about unleashing a recall election and projecting Arnold Schwarzenegger as the answer to our fiscal problems but balk at hoisting balloons to advertise selling cars over at the high school.

We turn schools into panhandlers and then get squeamish over the fine print.

Schwarzenegger for governor? Sure, why not?

Hawking used cars in the school parking lot? Absolutely.

With balloons!

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Dana Parsons’ columnappears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at [email protected] or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.