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McDonald school levy would be for repairs and improvements
McDONALD
The McDonald school board Monday told residents at a town-hall meeting it wants to place a new 4.3-mill levy to generate $223,913 annually for five years on the Nov. 4 ballot.
It would be used for nothing else but repairs and improvements on the district school buildings.
The new levy would replace a 5-mill emergency operating levy, which generates $260,000 a year but expires at the end of December.
Voters also will save money on their taxes with the new levy, school officials said, which would cost $1.31 less a year for the owner of a $50,000 home. The current tax is $76.56 a year and would be reduced to $75.25 a year with the new levy.
Schools Superintendent Ken Halbert said the local board has been “very pragmatic” in digging out of state fiscal emergency and making cuts and changes needed to help get the district financially back on its feet.
Schools Treasurer Bill Johnson said that the ability to eliminate one levy while asking for another is, “a celebration of the fact the board made some good decisions to get us back in shape.”
The new levy would be used to follow the school board’s five-year strategy, to make needed repairs and improvements.
He said the overall goal is to make improvements that will last for at least 10 to 20 years and make sure work at the high school lasts for another 50 years.
Halbert said a committee of staff headed by high-school principal Gary Carkido has provided input for the board to help identify an estimated $1.5 million in work that needs to be done over the next five years, if the levy is approved.
He noted that, though the board could have asked for a renewal of the old 5-mill levy and used the funds from it for anything that was needed in the district, including salaries, it preferred to ask for a new levy. This 4.3-mill measure would be earmarked specifically for district repairs and improvements.
Plans will focus mostly on the junior-senior high school and the high-school stadium.
The board has identified work it plans to do for four years, from 2014 through 2017.
The list for 2014 includes some more pressing problems that already have been dealt with, including: fixing the chimney at the high school, which was starting to deteriorate from age; replacing the steps and platform into the McClary gymnasium, which had become completely unsafe; repairing the auditorium stage; and making repairs to the visitor’s bleachers at Burkey stadium so that there no longer is any danger of anyone falling through the bleachers.
“These are needs, not wants,” Halbert told the seven residents who attended the meeting.