Sending it to the voters

The Medford School Board will be asking voters to approve a $22.6 million maintenance and infrastructure improvement referendum in November.

At Monday’s school board meeting, members voted unanimously (with Brian Hallgren absent) to go to referendum after reviewing the results of a recent community survey. In setting the amount, board members focused on items that those taking the survey indicated were the highest priority while further trimming the amount to minimize taxpayer impact.

The largest items in the proposed referendum are expansion of the Tech Ed space at $6.4 million including connecting the tech ed building to the high school, the addition and upgrades of classroom space for core science and language arts programs at $6.2 million including adding an accessible entrance from the lower level of the high school, and $7.9 million on infrastructure projects including furnaces, roofs and addressing bathroom and plumbing issues at the high school and $468,000 on doing bathrooms outside the middle school gym that date from the 1950s when that portion the building was originally built.

According to district administrator Laura Lundy, the district received 925 completed surveys. She projected this is about a 15% return rate which she said she felt was good considering the short turn-around time and the district not sending it out with an addressed return envelope.

See SCHOOL on page 4 About 54% of the responses came from people who identified as being between ages 35 and 54. In addition to be available online, the survey was circulated with a full page in both The Star News and The Shopper.

The largest concentration of responses came from the city of Medford with 33% of responses and the town of Medford with 23% of overall responses.

At Monday’s meeting, Lundy presented the projects which showed a majority of support through response of very likely or somewhat likely. Altogether, as presented, the projects would have totaled about $27,848,000. Board members then worked to select the items that scored the highest and met the most needs of the district to bring it down to $22,680,000 in projects to be funded.

At the meeting board members needed to determine first if the district was going to go to referendum, second if they were going to ask one or two questions and third which projects to include and the total amount of the referendum request.

Updated information from the state and a projection from analysts with the district’s bond advisor Baird, puts the district eligible to receive 71% funding on amounts borrowed up to $22 million. For amounts higher than that, the district would receive a lower level of state reimbursement.

Based on a $22 million bond over 20 years, with a conservative interest rate projection of 5.25%, the projected tax impact would be about $0.45 per $1,000 of value, or about $90 a year on a $200,000 home.

Board member Don Everhard questioned what the additional tax impact would be to go to $30 million and get all the projects completed. Finance director Audra Brooks said this would be an additional $18 on a $100,000 home.

Everhard noted that while the high school bathrooms received the most support at 60% saying they would be very likely to support it, he questioned if it would benefit education. “Our mission is education,” he said comparing it to the identified project to add elementary school classroom space and the Stetsonville Elementary School bathrooms which received 49% saying they would be very likely to support it.

Elementary principal Dan Miller agreed that the elementary needs were very important, but also noted that by addressing other needs in the district this would free up money in the district’s maintenance budgets and using reserves in the the Fund 46, there are options to do these projects within the district budget.

Board president Dave Fleegel noted the board needed to decide if they wanted to go to referendum before deciding how much and what to include in it. Board members voted unanimously (with Hallgren absent) to go to referendum for the fall general election.

There was more discussion on if the district should ask one or two questions. State law limits the district to asking no more than two questions in a year. The trend statewide has been to ask yes or no on just one question.

Board member Kurt Werner suggested asking two questions to give voters the option to do all the projects or some of the projects. The concern raised was that people may get confused and choose to only vote for the second question for the additional projects because it would appear to be a lower cost.

Board member Steve Deml also cautioned about going too far in including projects that had lower support. He said he is not willing to toe the line so close, comparing it to what was done with prior referendum attempts.

He raised concern about muddying the water by asking more than one question.

Board members agreed to go with one question.

Werner said he felt all seven projects were needed. However Deml reminded the board of the need to be responsive to the residents who took the time do the survey.

“We have the survey and we have to listen to the results,” he said.

In looking at the top 5 projects rated by community support and need, members still wanted to scale back to bring it closer to the amount where state reimbursement aid is maximized but not go too high.

The first cut was to reduce the amount for updating building system and infrastructure throughout the district from $8.9 million to $7.9 million. This reflects the reality of the district having no intention of replacing things like boilers that are still working and that they can still get parts for repairs.

There was discussion regarding the bathrooms by the gym entrance at the Middle School. These bathrooms are original to when the large gym was built as the “Municipal Auditorium” in the 1950s. They were not touched when the middle school was built.

In the end, the board voted unanimously on a roll call vote (with Hallgren absent) to approve going to the voters to ask them to support a referendum of $22,668,000.