By Vanessa Lenz
SLN staff
The East Troy Community School District Board of Education has made a slight change in plans.
The board voted Monday night to meet on Wednesday, Aug. 22 to determine what if any referendum question will appear on the November election ballot.
While the board agreed last week to put two referendum questions on the Nov. 6 ballot (one $27.9 million plan for nine upgrades throughout the district and one $2.8 million plan for high school improvements), it will now consider one of two questions to put before voters.
Board member Martha Bresler said she changed her mind after hearing from the “other side of the coin” for the past week.
“I believe that $27.9 million won’t get us anything and I won’t vote for it,” she said.
Vice president Dawn Buchholtz said she wanted to push something through that a majority of East Troy residents will vote yes for.
“It’s the board’s responsibility to evaluate the fiscal impact,” she said.
Board president Brian Wexler echoed that sentiment.
“The risk is if we do everything we want to do, we risk losing everything,” he said.
The first proposed referendum question will ask voters to approve a $17.1 million plan for district improvements, primarily at East Troy High School.
The proposal, includes the construction of an $8.5 million Performing Arts Center with 600 seats, $1.5 million in upgrades to science, technology, engineering and math areas, $500,000 in athletic capital improvements, $122,500 to remodel the front entrance of the high school for security purposes, $150,000 to remodel bathrooms in the building to bring them up to ADA code, $2.8 million to remodel high school social studies and math classrooms to larger 1,200-1,300 square-foot rooms and improvements to the technology education area and the high school cafeteria/kitchen.
Business manager Kathy Zwirgzdas said the district has paid off some of its debt early, putting it in a position where a significant amount of facility work (about $15 million) can be done with little or no impact on the debt levy taxes.
If the referendum is approved, Zwirgzdas said residents who own a $150,000 home will most likely pay $83 more in property taxes a year.
“The first $15 million has no tax impact,” board member Mike Zei said.
The second referendum question, which was proposed by board member Steve Lambrechts, will ask voters to support an $18 million project to convert Prairie View Elementary School into a pre-K-5 building.
Lambrechts said most residents he has spoken to have indicated a desire to have a new elementary school constructed.
However, several board members said they weren’t comfortable moving forward with plans to renovate Prairie View without knowing the future of Chester Byrnes and Doubek elementary schools.
Following a district-wide facilities study, the school board opted to close Chester Byrnes in fall of 2010 due to a lengthy and costly list of repairs needed. Currently, the site is home to the district’s administration offices.
Doubek currently houses pre-K-first grade students.
While the exact question is uncertain, it seems likely that voters in the East Troy Community School District will have one referendum question to answer on their ballot. That question will deal with facility upgrades that school officials say need to happen in the immediate future.
Both referendum questions are products of the district’s $41 million long-range facilities master plan, which was created by the district’s ad-hoc Facilities Committee this summer.
The group of 27 residents spent the past several months going through the district’s laundry list of facility upgrades and prioritizing them.
Officials have been grappling with facility planning the past few years in the East Troy Community School District. A comprehensive study of the district’s existing buildings was conducted in 2009. Community surveys and other supplementary studies were conducted in an effort to assemble a long-range plan.
With an Aug. 25 deadline looming to get the referendum on the ballot, the school board will have to make a decision on Wednesday. The board will meet at 7 p.m. in the high school lecture hall.
