Jessica Cejnar Andrews / Monday, Feb. 28, 2022 @ 4:16 p.m. / Education, Elections
Del Norte Unified Decides Against Bond Measure
Del Norte Unified School District trustees decided to wait another four years to put a facilities bond measure before voters. File photo | Andrew Goff
Previously:
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The local school board pulled the plug on a facilities bond measure for November 2022, noting that with the housing market, the COVID-19 pandemic and the potential for higher gas prices, the community may not have the stomach for another tax.
However, Del Norte Unified School District trustees were happy to find out that a failed bond measure isn’t necessary for the school district to qualify for state financial hardship dollars. They also cited the need to market how they used a previous bond measure voters approved back in 2008.
“People don’t know what we’ve done,” Trustee Area 2 representative Angela Greenough told her colleagues Thursday. “Even the (Citizens Oversight Committee) we have currently sitting don’t know what we’ve done with Measure A money for the last 12 years.”
DNUSD began exploring the possibility of asking voters to approve a school facilities bond in 2020, however decided to focus their efforts on 2022 because of competing tax measures Crescent City and Del Norte County put forth.
In June 2021, Steve Morgan, the district’s director of facilities, said if a bond measure was successful it could help pay for eight modernization projects. The total cost for these projects was roughly $47 million, though DNUSD trustees never indicated an actual target for a potential bond measure, Superintendent Jeff Harris said Thursday.
In October, the district’s consultant, Jon Isom, of Isom Advisors, presented the results of a survey his firm conducted, indicating that 49 percent of 240 residents surveyed would support a bond measure while 44 percent said they would not support a bond measure.
“If you recall Jon’s recommendation, if we were to move forward with the bond, there would have to be some pretty strong support within the community for the bond,” Harris told trustees Thursday. “No. 1, we’d have to have CSEA and DNTA behind it because the bond is going to support their classroom; their facilities. We’d need to have parents behind it. We would need to have other elected boards behind it and we would need to have community members behind it who was placing a value on schools.”
Fifty-five percent of Del Norte County voters would need to approve the bond measure for it to pass, according to Harris.
While the local chapter of the California School Employees Association and the Del Norte Teachers Association, the unions that represent DNUSD’s classified and certificated staff respectively, acknowledge schools need to be upgraded, Harris listed a host of other issues to think of. This included the local housing market, increasing inflation and “the Ukraine crisis, which may drive gas prices up over $7.”
“Who knows what else is going to happen,” he said. “Our recommendation to you as a board is we not move forward at this point with the new bond. We know we need it. We know we’ve got to have it if we’re going to repair our schools. We just don’t believe it's the right time to place another burden on our community.”
While he agreed that the community likely wouldn’t support a school facilities bond measure, DNUSD Board President Don McArthur said his “fallback” was putting the measure on the 2022 ballot but not marketing it. He said his thinking was that even if the bond measure fails, DNUSD would be eligible for state facilities hardship dollars because it tried.
McArthur pointed out that Isom’s survey showed the deviation between those who supported a bond measure and those who opposed it was “pretty close,” it wouldn’t be inconceivable for the measure to pass. But, he acknowledged, that things have changed a lot since October.
“Seven months from now things will have changed again, so I don’t know what the future holds,” he said. “Some of these schools are as old as I am and older even, maybe. They need work.”
According to DNUSD’s assistant superintendent of business, Jeff Napier, the California Office of Public School Construction had required a failed ballot measure as a qualification for state hardship dollars, however that’s no longer the case. The OPSC will “look at everything we’ve done” when considering whether to grant those dollars to DNUSD, Napier said.
Del Norte County resident Sam Strait agreed that 2022 wasn’t the right time to ask the community to approve a facilities bond measure. Pointing to measures R and S, the 1 percent sales tax increase Del Norte County and Crescent City voters approved in 2020, and a recent property assessment approved by the Crescent Fire Protection District, residents are overburdened with taxes as it is, Strait said.
“Most people don’t realize when you say a $47 million bond, you don’t factor in the fact that there’s a pretty healthy bit of interest that’s tacked onto that,” Strait said, referring to the maximum bond amount DNUSD could ask for, though the Board of Trustees hadn’t set a target for the proposed bond measure. “It’s not $47 million you’re paying back. They don’t realize you’re going to be encumbered in many cases for 30-plus years on your property taxes and most folks that have property in this community are considerably in the poverty side of things.”
Another member of the public, who didn’t give his name, told the Board of Trustees that they made the right decision by not seeking approval for a bond measure. He, too, urged DNUSD to let people know what they did with the bond voters approved in 2008.
“To put it on a ballot right now knowing it wouldn’t pass would be much more difficult to pass another bond two years down the road,” he said. “You don’t want to get people in the mindset of let’s not pass a bond. Your original bond, put it out, market what you did with it, what you completed with it and tack the new bond, whatever it is, onto what you need to finish.”
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