Preparation credited for levy’s approval

Start early, and focus on the good.

That’s Harry Amend’s advice for school districts with a property tax levy to sell. It’s what the Coeur d’Alene School District did with this year’s supplemental levy, and it’s what the district superintendent credits with helping the levy pass Tuesday with high approval ratings and record voter turnout.

The Legislature’s removal of state property tax funding for schools in August didn’t hurt either, he said. “When your school tax bill drops by 78 percent, that makes a difference in people’s frame of mind,” Amend said.

The district put two levy options before voters, and both passed. The replacement of the expiring $14.6 million levy received 73 percent approval, and the second levy – a $3 million addition to the first – earned 68 percent.

Those are comfortable margins given recent history. The last supplemental levy, proposed in 2005, squeaked by with 54 percent of the vote.

In March 2006, voters defeated a school construction levy, which needed at least 55 percent approval to pass. It got just 45 percent. A community survey showed residents wanted more say in the levy process and more information about where the money would go.

So, the school district started early this time. While levy campaigns usually begin about six weeks before the vote, the Coeur d’Alene campaign began in December, more than five months before Tuesday’s election.

The district distributed a questionnaire in December seeking input on what programs should continue receiving funding through levy money. A town hall forum and workshop was held in January, prior to school budget workshops and meetings where the details of the levy were hammered out.

“I think that it’s worth it to take the extra couple of months to try, at least try, to reach out to the community” about what it wants and is willing to pay, Amend said.

Once the levy amount and what it pays for was set, the focus turned to what goes on in the schools and why it should be supported, Amend said.

“The strongest base for building community support,” Amend said, “comes from what goes on in the buses and the cafeterias and the classrooms of the schools every day of the week.”

That’s the strategy the Coeur d’Alene School District used in its levy campaign, and it seemed to work.

About 7,800 people – 22 percent of the district’s voting population – voted in the election, more than in any other school election in the past few years. In Post Falls, 1,159 voters, or 8 percent of the voting base, turned out.

The Post Falls levy received a 77 percent approval, similar to past levies.

Amend said he doesn’t subscribe to the theory that a higher voter turnout means a school levy is less likely to pass. Last year’s failed construction levy brought about 7,700 people to the polls, but this year’s levy brought even more and received a wide margin of support.

And it isn’t all because of property taxes, Amend said. He said he thinks the two-option levy could have passed a year ago, though not as handily, if the campaign were run as it was this year.

The get-out-the-vote effort was the largest ever, Amend said. Business leaders and others took charge of the campaign, donating more money and time than ever and paying for advertisements, yard signs and other literature. More parents, teachers and community members showed a sense of ownership in the levy this time, the superintendent said.

“I really believe that the businesses and the individual people became aware of what’s at stake,” he said. “It sounds hokey, but I really think it’s true this time.”