Credit neighborhood activism for stopping a Coeur d’Alene School District building project that had serious loose ends.

Also, credit the Coeur d’Alene Planning and Zoning Commission for not rubber-stamping the school district’s plans to rebuild Lakes Middle School on Person Field, a short distance south of the current school location and an important green space in older Coeur d’Alene.

As a result of neighborhood opposition and planning commission rejection, school officials must regroup as they lay the groundwork to run a levy election for as much as $50 million next spring to address building needs. If they hope to pass a capital facilities levy of that magnitude, they have to show more organization and do a better job of public relations and answering tough questions than they did this fall.

Two things stand out from the district’s aborted attempt to relocate aging Lakes School: It didn’t realize the importance of Person Field to neighbors because it didn’t meet with them until the eleventh hour of the planning process. Nor did it have a solid plan for future use of the current school site a few blocks away. Unable to answer key questions, the district wisely decided to rebuild Lakes on the current site rather than relocate. A $50 million levy will be a tough enough sell to patrons in the current anti-tax climate without worrying about a backlash from the Person Field neighborhood.

In early November, the district announced plans to run a levy election next spring, which would include building or retrofitting a new Lakes Middle School, an 11th elementary, Canfield Middle School, Winton Elementary and Borah Elementary. Since then, the district has talked unofficially about eliminating the proposed upgrade to Canfield Middle School to reduce the levy, making it more palatable for voters.

School officials got their first taste of how hard passage of the next levy may be when they encountered the tenacious challenge to their Person Field plans.

Person Field, if the truth be told, is one of Coeur d’Alene’s most under-used and unimproved play areas, consisting of a softball diamond, an open grass area for tackle football and soccer, and a run-down track that encircles the old high school football field. At one point, it was suggested as a possible site for the new city library. Maybe now neighbors will begin a push to convert the seven acres into a legitimate park before another group conjures a purpose for it.

Meanwhile, school officials are facing a major task as they pursue another ambitious building program. For more than a dozen years, district voters have readily approved a laundry list of building proposals, including Lake City High School, Woodland Middle School, and several elementaries. They still have a good chance of passing the next levy, too. But the controversy of Person Field shows that the next levy election may be the toughest one in quite awhile.