Lakeland bond worthy of support
The Lakeland School District in North Idaho is known for quality education and fiscal conservatism.
Traditionally, for example, the school district asks voters for a supplemental levy only when forced to. Two years ago, for the first time since the 1980s, the district was forced by state budget cuts to ask voters for additional money to keep pace with textbook replacement. The district therefore asked voters for a two-year levy totaling $900,000, but it didn’t seek another levy when that one ended.
Now, officials in the rapidly growing district have a new set of legitimate needs.
On Tuesday, they will ask patrons to approve a $14.2 million bond to build a new elementary school at Twin Lakes, expand the high school to house the freshman grade, and purchase a site for another high school, among other things. By asking for the bond now, they can take advantage of low interest rates and an expanding tax base. This proposal has been blessed by the district’s Facility Improvement Committee. It makes sense. Voters should support it.
The only concern of any consequence about the multifaceted plan involves the location of a proposed elementary school at Twin Lakes.
An explosives storage compound, belonging to Dyno Nobel, exists less than a mile from the planned school site. The compound is located at the end of an unmarked drive branching off Scarcello Road, surrounded by farmland, with houses nearby. When he found out about the storage facility, district patron Paul Morton expressed his concerns to school officials and The Spokesman-Review. He was right in doing so. It would be foolish to endanger as many as 500 youngsters in the future by constructing a school too close to a storage area for explosives.
However, several experts assured Morton and the district that the school will be far enough away from the explosives site. The vice president of safety for Dyno Nobel, the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial explosives, said the industry is highly regulated and the storage site posed no threat to the future school. More important, the local fire marshal and Kootenai County’s planning director and the disaster services director also signed off on the location.
Additionally, a Kootenai County risk assessment in 2000 found no instances in U.S. history of explosions at any commercial site that caused significant injury or damage off site, according to reporter Taryn Brodwater. Lakeland Superintendent Chuck Kinsey is right: This is a non-issue.
A little more than $6 million each will be used to build the elementary school and expand the high school, with the remainder going to buy land, expand a food services facility and add a wireless computer/science lab at existing elementaries. The district will be able to do all this with a tax rate that will fall from $5.92 per $1,000 of assessed valuation to $4.75.
The measure requires approval of two-thirds of the voters.