One Down, One To Go Post Falls Turns Attention From Library To Schools

It’s $2 million down and about $16 million to go, say Post Falls library and school bond supporters.

Voters approved a $2 million bond Tuesday to build a library that will more than quadruple the size of the existing facility.

On March 24, voters will pass judgment on a school bond to build a high school.

“I think the fact that the community supports the library, which is a community service, that’s a positive message,” said Dick Harris, Post Falls School District superintendent. “We have 20 portable classrooms being used right now (at Post Falls High School) and we’re double-shifting at the middle school. We’ve run out of temporary options. We need a permanent building.”

The school board has not determined the amount of the bond, but the last bond proposal - which failed in October 1996 - was for $15.8 million.

A minority of voters, 37.5 percent, managed to defeat the measure for the third time in two years. Idaho requires a 66.6 percent majority to pass library and school bond issues.

Final unofficial results of the library election show the bond received 77 percent support.

Linda Holehan, who has campaigned for past school bond issues, said she worries that passage of the library bond will discourage people from voting for a school bond.

“Now taxes are being raised,” she said. “They probably won’t want to do it again.”

Anti-tax activist Dee Lawless hopes so.

“This is the fourth time they’ve tried to ram this bond down the throat of taxpayers,” said the member of the Kootenai County Property Taxpayers Association.

But Lawless said she worries that because people won’t have received their increased property-tax bills by March, they will vote to raise taxes again.

“It (the library bond) is a fairly small bond, and people have short memories,” she said. “The voters are unpredictable.”

Don Morgan, a fellow member of the taxpayers association and a vocal critic of the past three school bond proposals, said he sees passage of the library bond as a good sign.

“I do think that the bond shows a couple of things,” he said. One is that Post Falls voters will support projects they think are reasonable; the other, he said, is that voters can pass bond issues by the two-thirds majority required by Idaho law.

In October, Idaho Gov. Phil Batt implied he may recommend lowering the supermajority required for passing school bonds.

“The problem in Post Falls is not the voters,” Morgan said. “The problem has been a school board and administrators who’ve been unreasonable.

“They’re proposing champagne projects on a beer budget.”

Lawless said she would like the school board to move ninth-graders back into the junior high to ease crowding in the high school.

Harris countered that Lawless’ suggestion would not help alleviate crowded conditions throughout the district.

Instead, he suggested building a high school, moving middle school students into the old high school and using the middle school for more elementary-level classrooms.

“So the high school creates room all the way down,” he said.

Cort and Valerie Wilcox, school bond supporters, hope to seize the momentum started by passage of the library bond.

Easing overcrowding at Ponderosa Elementary School by moving sixth-graders to the middle school has made the school more efficient and more easily managed, said Valerie Wilcox, who works at Ponderosa.

“So that tells us that having a less-crowded facility does make a better education,” she said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo