‘Moral Victory’ Doesn’t Ease Crowding Post Falls Searches For Solutions When Bond Issue Fails By 200 Votes

When the chairman of the Post Falls School Board asked the board to approve the results from Tuesday’s high school bond election, member Ed Adamchak was reluctant.

“Do we have to?” he asked.

On Wednesday, Adamchak still was morose over the election.

“I’m still reeling from the fact that we lost this issue by only 4 percent,” he said.

In the final tally, the $15.8 million bond levy for a basic high school only won 62.6 percent of the vote.

The district needed just 200 more votes in favor of the bond to win.

The second issue, a $1.94 million bond levy for an auditorium and athletic complex, received only 56.3 percent of the vote.

Superintendent Richard Harris called the results a “moral victory” because of the support gained since the 1994 bond levy, which earned only 49 percent of the vote.

Skip Hissong, a co-chairman of the campaign, said the setback would not prevent him from doing all he could to help pass another bond levy in the future.

“You pick yourself up and dust yourself off,” he said. “Life didn’t end last night. We just got slapped around a lot.”

The school district has not yet made plans for another bond levy. In the short term, the district will purchase and install portable classrooms at those schools that are overflowing with students.

Prairie View and Seltice elementary schools will get two new classrooms each in portable buildings next year. The junior high and high school also might get portables.

Next year, the school district will form another committee to address the continuing problem of finding space for new students.

“We need a new school now,” said Assistant Superintendent Jerry Keane. “It’s a great need, but we were able to get about 63 percent of the people to agree that this is a need. That’s pretty good in any political field.”

Also a good sign, school officials said, was the fact that 4,645 people turned out to vote. That’s almost 1,000 more than voted in 1994’s election.

Drumming up opposition was Dee Lawless, a member of the Kootenai County Property Owners Association which bought a full-page advertisement in the Post Falls Tribune last week against the levy.

Lawless said she danced a victory jig Wednesday for all the property owners whose taxes won’t go up next year because of the school district bond.

“I’m convinced there are other viable solutions to overcrowding rather than building a fancy new high school at this point,” she said.

The solution is not getting the Legislature to change the super-majority requirement for bond issues, either, she said. The 66s requirement protects property taxpayers from those who don’t own property, she said.

Some supporters thought the association’s ad may have been enough to give certain people a reason to vote “No.”

“That could have caused some damage, with the people who are on the fence,” speculated Susan Cross, a parent and bond supporter.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: Post Falls School District enrollment