Computers Won’t Be Part Of Levy

The Spokane School Board decided Wednesday that classroom computers are risky business in hard-fisted times.

The board won’t chance asking taxpayers to buy computers - at least not until November 1996 or early 1997.

Officials feared a computer tax vote might fail, dragging with it the district’s regular maintenance and operations levy.

The maintenance levy provides one-fifth of the district’s budget. It goes to voters Feb. 6.

Recommending against a computer tax vote now, Superintendent Gary Livingston cited city budget cuts and United Way’s fund-raising shortfall as signs Spokane is in a penny-pinching mood. “This is not the time financially,” he said.

Spokane’s 1994 “no” vote on school computers and that year’s lukewarm approval for a regular levy also were warnings.

From 1986 to 1992, Spokane passed regular school levies with yes votes of 75 percent to 80 percent.

In 1994, however, the levy squeaked by with only 237 votes to spare. That was the year voters rejected the district’s first try at a $30 million computer levy.

Wednesday’s decision will be a blow to teachers and principals who sketched plans for spending a $10 million computer tax, said Joe Austin, district technology director.

“They’ve been working real hard on their plans,” Austin said.

The district’s regular levy will be for $32.9 million in 1997 and $30.9 in 1998. The estimated tax rates are $3.99 per $1,000 of assessed value the first year and $3.56 per $1,000 the second year.

The second-year decrease is due to the expiration of a temporarily higher levy lid. School board members will lobby the Legislature to lift the levy lid again.

Without an increase in the levy lid “we will be forced to spend less than the state average and we will be less competitive,” Livingston said.

Traditionally, the district runs its regular levy in March. The vote was moved to February to avoid sharing the ballot with a potentially confusing presidential primary.

Wednesday was board member Carol Wendle’s last meeting and newly elected Christie Querna’s first.

, DataTimes