Informal Poll Shows Bond Support

An informal poll by the Valley Voice shows next week’s $78 million Central Valley School District bond election has 67 percent support. Central Valley officials say their own numbers show much stronger approval.

The measure must have 60 percent approval to pass.

The Valley Voice found 100 voters - in the pool hall at the Sokane Valley Senior Citizens Center, in doctors’ waiting rooms, in the parking lots outside Walmart and Tidyman’s and at other locations across the district.

Of those, 67 voters said they would support the bond. Twelve said they’d vote no, citing wasteful spending in the schools or rising property taxes. Twenty-one people said they hadn’t decided yet how they will vote.

“Your numbers (of supporting voters) are low,” said Craig Holmes, a Central Valley School Board member who also is a member of Kids First, the campaign committee. Phone calls canvassing thousands of people who voted in the last two elections have found support that is “overwhelmingly supportive,” Holmes said.

Many of the senior citizens contacted by the Valley Voice said they’d support the school bond, as they routinely do.

“People voted so I could have schools,” said Beverly Gillett, a grandmother who was shopping one recent afternoon at Rusty’s Produce at Sprague and McDonald.

Occasionally, husband and wife are divided in their voting. Grace and Al Fredericks are one such couple. Both are retired school teachers who live not far from the banks of the Spokane River. They’ve seen the assessed value of their riverfront property shoot up recently.

Grace Fredericks is stalwart in her support: “I would never in a million years vote against any school bond,” she said.

But Al Fredericks is going to cancel his wife’s vote. He’s upset that the assessed value of his land has jumped 500 percent and convinced that some oldtimers are going to be taxed out of their homes.

“That’s why we are at our limit,” he said.

Individuals such as Al Fredericks may hope to send the bond to defeat. But little organized opposition has surfaced.

Ed Sawatzki, a politically active Democrat, is one vocal critic of the bond. He dislikes the school board’s decision to set aside state matching money expected from the high school construction projects. That money should be used to help pay off these bonds, he argues.

Sawatzki launched a flurry of faxes and has passed out leaflets aimed at defeating the bond unless the school board changes its stand on the state money.

Sawatzki initially used the group name CVSLUSH, which stood for: “Citizens value savings, lose underhanded slush hoard.” He claimed a few other people belonged to the group and implied in one interview that they were local political candidates.

Then Sawatzki realized he was breaking state law by failing to file public disclosure forms on his group.

For some voters, though, the decision is simplicity itself.

Jeff Pickering, a dad with school-age children, said he’s voting no. The appeal to update the high schools doesn’t impress him. “That’s just a problem (Central) Valley will have to solve by itself,” he said.

VOTE TUESDAY On Tuesday, voters will decide whether they want to spend $78 million to rebuild Central Valley High School and build a new University High School at 32nd and Pines.