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Trumbull issues get mixed results
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
McDonald school officials say the passage of a 10.75-mill, five-year emergency levy Tuesday means the school district won’t have to return to voters in November with a similar or larger levy.
The levy approved Tuesday will generate $580,000 annually to help offset the $509,000 the district has lost in federal-stimulus money and another $71,000 it is projecting to lose from the state budget.
Treasurer Brian Stidham has said the district cannot be released from its current state of fiscal emergency until it can prove it can give a five-year forecast in the black.
School officials have made staffing cuts, and teachers took a three-year pay freeze beginning in 2011 to achieve more than $850,000 in annual savings over the past 18 months.
The school district has cut maintenance and utility costs and closed the indoor swimming pool.
Stidham, who also is a board member in the Mathews school district, saw the McDonald levy pass on the same night Mathews’ levy failed.
The 2-mill permanent improvement levy rejected in Mathews by a 59 percent to 41 percent total would have raised $307,000 annually. Voters rejected the same levy in November and said no to a $22.5 million bond issue for new-school construction in 2009.
The levy would have covered the costs of improvements to Mathews High School necessitated by adding seventh- and eighth-graders to the building from Neal Middle School after it closes at the end of the current school year.
Ken Wallace, president of the Mathews Board of Education, said Tuesday the levy defeat won’t result in staffing cuts because it was for permanent improvements, but the loss will “make it tough to take care of aging facilities.”
Hubbard Township voters approved by a 53 percent to 47 percent margin a 1-mill, five-year additional levy to provide for the general construction, reconstruction, resurfacing and repair of streets, roads and bridges to raise $98,736 annually.