CV to delay $55.2 million bond levy vote

The Central Valley School District Board of Directors voted Monday night to place a $55.2 million construction bond proposal before voters in March instead of November as planned.

“We want more time to get information out to the voters,” Superintendent Mike Pearson said. “There is not enough time to communicate.”

He said summer distractions and vacations would allow district staff only six weeks to prepare for a November election if absentee ballots went out to voters around the expected date of Oct. 19.

“Voters don’t start thinking about elections until Sept. 1,” Pearson said.

Moving the bond election would also save the district money, because it would run concurrently with the district’s maintenance and operations levy, Pearson said.

It costs about between $30,000 to $40,000 to promote bonds and levies.

The district currently has about $11,000 set aside for that purpose, and would need to raise an additional $48,000 in funding to promote the bond and levy separately, Pearson said.

The school board voted in May to place the ambitious construction bond before voters in the fall to pay for a capital projects plan recommended by district staff. The plan was based in part on the findings of a community committee charged with investigating growth in the district.

Using data from Spokane County, the committee told the board in May 2004 that eight of the district’s 21 schools would surge past capacity by 2008.

Schools in the eastern half of the district’s 80-square-mile boundary are already overcrowded. The district approved a request to place portable classrooms at Liberty Lake and Greenacres Elementary Schools this fall, as well as University High School. Liberty Lake is expected to have more than 800 students this coming school year. The school was built for 650. University High School, which was built in 2002, is expected to exceed its 1,800 student capacity for the next several years.

The bond proposal would pay to remodel and expand Greenacres, Ponderosa and Opportunity elementary schools, and would pay to build two new schools to serve students in the northeast part of the district.

A new middle school would be built in Liberty Lake adjacent to the current elementary school, and a new elementary school would be built on 17 acres at Mission and Long Road. The district paid $850,000 for the land in February.

The state would pay about $9.1 million in state matching funds, which would be used for technology and infrastructure updates at six other schools, including Progress, Broadway University, Chester and Sunrise Elementary schools, and at Summit School, a choice school that serves students in grades kindergarten through eight.

The bond would increase property taxes 70 cents per $1,000 of assessed property valuation, up from the current rate $5.63 per $1,000.

Pearson also cited the efforts of a nonprofit group in Liberty Lake that wants to break away from Central Valley and start a Greater Liberty Lake School District as a reason to move the bond.

The group has stated that if the bond fails, they would pursue a separate school district, even though state education officials have said current law does not allow it. Members of the group said they would lobby to change the law, if necessary.

“That, coupled with a failed bond, could jeopardize the success of our levy in the spring,” Pearson said.

Board member Lynn Trantow, who works with the district’s bond and levy committee, said she agreed that the community would not be ready for a November bond.

“A lot of our community volunteers are saying, ‘this is too soon for us,’ ” Trantow said.