State panel votes down 13.4-mill levy

By MARY SMITH

news@vindy.com

McDONALD

The State Finance and Planning Commission overseeing operation of McDonald schools has voted against the district’s placing a proposed 13.4-mill levy on the Nov. 2 ballot.

The levy would generate $715,000 a year for five years, school officials said.

In a 3-2 vote Wednesday, the commission cited areas of uncertainty that preclude placing a levy on the ballot.

The local school board also voted at a special meeting Tuesday not to go back to voters for approval of 2-mill, five-year general- improvement levy to generate $61,828 a year in November.

The board did, however, vote to place the emergency levy on the ballot.

The local board does not have to take any further action to rescind the 13.4-mill levy plans.

The commission cited these reasons for going against the levy: uncertainty in fiscal cuts that might be made by the state to local districts; uncertainty about whether the district may have to repay money to the Ohio School Facilities Commission; and uncertainty in the outcome of negotiations with the McDonald Education Association, which have gone to a vote of the membership, and with the Ohio Association of Public School Employees No. 662, which are to take place in the next month or two.

District Treasurer Brian Stidham explained that the paperwork to close out the 2002-03 Ohio School Facilities Commission project to build a new Roosevelt Elementary School and renovate the high school is not complete.

The district is at risk to owe $578,000, which is the amount the school facilities commission has given the treasurer. But whether the money will be owed won’t be known until the paperwork is completed.

All districts are given a certain amount of money by the state for an OSFC project that is not intended to be spent for anything but the project, Stidham explained.

If problems arise with the project, the money is intended for that use. “The money may or may not have gone to the project or been allowable,” Stidham said.

He noted that new rules require the OSFC and school districts to close out their paperwork on the projects much more quickly than in some of the older projects.