(Spirit Lake)– A facilities improvement plan for the Spirit Lake Community Schools is a step closer to going before the voters in a bond referendum in November. The School Board voted 5-0 Wednesday evening to call for a petition with at least 150 signatures on it calling for the referendum. They have a little less than a week, until August 26th, to get the needed signatures turned into the County Auditor’s Office.
The final amount of the proposal is $69.9 million. School officials say that includes ALL costs, including construction, engineering, and architectural fees along with contingencies. As we’ve reported previously it includes the elementary, middle and high school along with new turf for the football field, new lights for the football, baseball and softball fields, and an additional bus barn. A field house or athletic bubble that was proposed earlier has been dropped from the plans.
School Board President Jeremy Mouw says he was pleased with the turnout and the input the board received during tours and a question and answer session the board also held Wednesday…
“We had met earlier in the day with the Dickinson County Taxpayer’s Association. We had a lot of open houses where we were doing tours, and I think overwhelmingly positive input here tonight.”
Mouw adds he’s confident the board has done its due diligence during the three years of coming up with a plan…
“We’ve gotten estimates to just fix the HVAC and the roof and that was about, I think that was about $15.9 million. And then again you still have an old building with the guts of it are not good. Our fear was we would spend 15 to 16 million dollars, fix something up, and then have to tear it down in a few years and it just didn’t seem like a good use of taxpayer funds. This, I think, is a far better outcome. It fixes, I think almost all of our issues in the future.”
Superintendent Dr. David Smith urges those who have not yet toured the facilities, to do so, adding that while they may look good from the outside, it’s much different inside.
He says while the action taken by the board was significant, a lot of work lies ahead in what will be a pretty compressed time frame…
“It’s a long path ahead, we’re just getting started. It will be about educating people and trying to get the word out. You know not everybody is going to approve of it but we hope we can get the majority to approve.”
The school board will hold another special meeting within the next week once the needed signatures are gathered, at which time they will formally consider a resolution with the language that would be included with the referendum November 3rd.
The Spirit Lake School District’s Financial Consultant, Tim Oswald of Piper Sandler, addressed impacts on property taxpayers should voters approve a $69.9 million bond issue…
“The tax rate would increase $2.32 per thousand and so for a $300,000 home assessed value, it would increase $278 a year and the bond will go for 20 years, so that amount for each year.”
Oswald says the levy rate in the Spirit Lake School District would still compare very favorably with neighboring districts even if the referendum would pass…
“If you look at the northwest Iowa districts, Spirit Lake is currently the lowest of those that don’t just send out all their kids in open enrollment. With the bond issue they would become second, Okoboji would be slightly lower than Spirit Lake. But with the bond issue Spirit Lake would jump from first to second lowest on the list.”
Oswald says that’s due to the district’s high property values. He expects those numbers will only continue to grow in coming years.
