School Board split on referendum question
By Tracy Ouellette
Editor
It was the boys versus the girls Monday night at the East Troy School Board’s special meeting that included a working referendum session.
The boys won, with the board voting 3-2 to move forward with adding on the Doubek Elementary and abandoning Chester Byrnes.
With the Aug. 11 deadline fast approaching to have a referendum question drafted and submitted for the November general election, the School Board needed to vote Monday on whether the district would reopen Byrnes and renovate it for student use or abandon the facility completely in favor of putting a large addition on to Doubek.
The board members opinions on which was best for the district split down gender lines with Dawn Buchholtz and Martha Bresler wanting to renovate Chester Byrnes and reopen it for Pre-K and Early Childhood classes and Ted Zess, Chris Smith and Steve Lambrechts solidly on the side of closing Byrnes completely and adding on to Doubek.
Buchholtz expressed displeasure at the representatives from Bray Architects when they came back to the board with a more than $7 million price tag on bringing Chester Byrnes up to date with a usable gym. Buchholtz said the company went overboard in pricing what the board asked them to for the school, calling the amount “ridiculous.”
The architect explained that their hands were tied when a renovation project encompasses more than 50 percent of the building they have to bring everything up to code in the entire building.
Bresler asked what the cost would be if they kept the newer part of Byrnes and tore down all of the older part except for the gym and then renovated what needed to be done. Bray representatives didn’t have an exact number for that, but estimated it would be somewhere between $4.5 to $5 million.
Buchholtz wanted this option explored further before the board voted, saying the potential of Byrnes hadn’t been fully explored and the community told the board it wanted all the district’s buildings used instead of building new.
Lambrechts disagreed with her saying the survey indicated the community wanted the district to use the existing buildings and that didn’t necessarily mean all of the buildings.
District Administrator Dr. Chris Hibner reminded the board the decision was coming down to the wire and they needed to make a motion that night so the attorneys could draft a referendum question they could review next week so it could be ready to go by the Aug. 11 deadline.
“We get more bang for the buck with Option C,” School Board President Zess said, referring to the proposed addition to Doubek.
“I think Option C shows the community good effort with consolidating schools; it says a lot about spending wisely,” Smith said.
With the board’s decision now made, the next step is trimming off enough on the proposed plans for all the schools to keep the price tag the $20.8 million or below the community has requested.
‘Zero tax impact’
Smith told the board he was having a hard time explaining to community members that the district could borrow up to $20.8 million without it affecting the tax levy. He told the board people were saying they didn’t believe it was possible and he had run into a lot of distrust among community members.
“I’ve been getting feedback that it can’t be a zero tax impact,” Smith said. “I don’t know how to explain it to them.”
Business Manager Kathy Zwirgzdas gave a presentation to the board, showing how the debt from the 1999 referendum to build Prairie View and upgrade the High School was dropping off in the next four years and how it allowed the district to borrow the $20.8 million for the new referendum without it affecting the tax rate.
However, Zwirgzdas admitted that it wasn’t truly a “zero tax impact” because if the district chose not to go to referendum and borrow for the much-needed improvements the district would then be “debt free” by 2018 and the tax levy would then drop.
“Sounds like we should be telling them that we can be debt free, but it would negatively affect the students in the district,” Smith said.
“That’s exactly what we need to tell them,” Zess said.
“Boys vs. Girls”? Poorly conceived headline in light of the fact that the decision making process has nothing to do with the gender of the board members. It’s a coincidental fact that is immaterial to a much more important story.
How instead about “Split Board moves to close Byrnes, expand Doubek”?
We keep seeing all this talk about the best way to ask for these Millions. I don’t recall seeing numbers on what the projected student enrollment is looking like over say the next ten years. Going up? Dropping? Flat? We also are not seeing much discussion of a *plan* for regular and correct maintenance of facilities so that this need for funds does not “surprise” us again in five years or so. How about some discussion about that, School Board? Or better yet as a Line Item for a Referendum?