Districts hope 2nd tax vote succeeds
Posted on Wednesday, January 30, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/215237/
Seven Arkansas school districts where voters rejected proposed tax increases for construction projects in September’s elections will try again by the end of April.
The seven districts are Huntsville, Harmony Grove in Saline County, Strong-Huttig, Quitman, Mena, Green Forest and Mountain Home.
Three more districts — Bryant, Clarendon and Sheridan — that also suffered tax increase defeats will use existing operating funds to meet critical building needs.
The affected districts put together their latest plans for financing new schools and building additions in consultation with the Arkansas Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation and the division’s three-member commission.
The commission, chaired by Arkansas Education Commissioner Ken James, received the report on the special elections at a meeting Tuesday during which the commissioners gave preliminary approval to a streamlined process for districts to seek state assistance for their building projects. The state pays a share for academic space — whether for classrooms or libraries, new buildings or renovations.
Those proposed rules will be the subject of a public hearing within the next few weeks. The commission will meet again in the spring to vote on them.
Act 996 of 2007 for the first time authorizes the public school facilities division and commission to step in when school districts fail to pass on a first try any tax increases necessary to comply with each district’s master plan for facilities.
All Arkansas districts must develop facilities master plans to ensure that the district schools meet state adequacy or suitability requirements and can accommodate projected enrollment growth.
The second tax election must take place within seven months of the first failed election — unless the election would fall within the same calendar year as the first election, at which point the second election would have to be delayed beyond seven months.
Doug Eaton, director of the division, reported to the commission Tuesday that he met with officials in each of the affected districts within 10 days of the September elections to begin a review of their original tax proposals. He also reviewed with them their plans for use of the proceeds had the taxes passed and to whittle down the requests to cover the most immediate building needs.
James warned that districts that don’t provide the necessary funding for suitable school buildings can be “kicked into facilities distress” by the commission. Districts that fall into that classification jeopardize funds they may use for purposes not required by state academic or facilities standards, he said.
“If districts are spending resources for extracurricular activities and other kinds of things that are not mandated as part of standards and part of adequacy, that’s when we get to a point where we say, ‘Folks, you have to get these buildings up to snuff.’
“ Then the state can step in and say, ‘You aren’t going to spend resources on those kinds of things any more.’ That’s not our desire to get to that point.”
Ultimately, districts that do not provide suitable facilities can be consolidated into other districts.
In each of the seven district’s planning a special election, the districts are seeking a smaller tax increase in the coming election as compared with the request last September.
The Huntsville district, for example, is seeking a 2. 9-mill tax increase at a special election April 8, down from the 4-mill increase requested in September, said Huntsville Superintendent Alvin Lievsay.
“The state is directing that we do something to meet suitability and growth needs,” Lievsay said in a telephone interview after the commission’s meeting. “We had to submit a plan. That plan could have been adding portable buildings to holding an election for whatever amount we wanted to ask for.”
He submitted a plan to ask voters for a 2. 9-mill increase to build a school for grades 6 through 9.
Asked why the district settled on new construction, Lievsay said that board felt it had to ask the people to do what is best for kids.
“If the people don’t agree, then we will have to fall back to a different plan, but they [the Huntsville School Board ] didn’t believe it was their job to propose something that they didn’t feel was right for children,” Lievsay said.
Huntsville voters last approved a school tax increase in 1987.
The Mountain Home School District also is planning an April 8 election. The 4, 000-student district is proposing a 2. 95-mill tax increase to the existing 29. 21 mill tax rate, said Ann Thomas, the district’s business manager.
The district originally asked for 3. 75 mills. That would have provided funding for a multipurpose center at the high school. That component has been eliminated.
The center piece of the district’s plan is to construct a new school to house grades 3, 4 and 5, but other schools also will undergo improvements.
“We are hoping we will be successful this time,” Thomas said.
The district last passed a tax increase about a dozen years ago.
Of the three districts that are going to use existing operating funds to meet immediate needs, the Sheridan district already held a special election earlier this month in which the proposed tax increase was rejected a second time.
The Clinton School District is another district that lost a millage increase last September. The district has been classified as a fiscally distressed district because it was spending its reserves to meet annual expenses. It is continuing to work with the Department of Education to correct its financial problems.
Mansfield and the Hermitage districts also lost tax elections for buildings last fall, but a subsequent review of the proposed projects by the districts and division concluded that the projects were not urgent enough to warrant special elections.