Ballots go out for school bonds

Ballots for West Valley School’s $3.5 million bond election will be mailed today.

Voting ends on June 15.

The district is requesting the bond issue to build an 18,000-square-foot addition connected to the current building’s library. The addition would become a wing for West Valley’s sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students.

The wing would include 10 new classrooms, a restructured library and a new science room. The existing science lab would be converted into an art room.

The wing also would include additional restrooms and storage areas. A new bus drop-off would be created off McMannamy Drive north of the school.

If there is enough money, school officials also hope to build a new kitchen — or at least the shell of a kitchen. West Valley can always buy appliances and equipment later, Superintendent Todd Fiske said.

Of the school’s 433 students, upwards of 350 eat lunch there daily, Fiske said. Now those meals are prepared at the Evergreen School District, but one day West Valley might be on its own for lunch.

“As [the lunch program] continues to grow and grow rapidly, Evergreen might say, ‘We will have to take care of our own school first,’” he said.

West Valley’s growth is the reason for the bond request. The school is nearly at its practical capacity, according to a recent analysis performed by a pair of Idaho-based consultants. West Valley is just 44 students away from maximum capacity.

In the last decade, enrollment rose 33 percent, more than any other Flathead County school district. There are nearly 70 more students there than there were five years ago. Nearly half of that growth has come during the recession.

While the recession has made many taxpayers, already strapped for cash, leery of West Valley’s bond request, it also is one reason the district is pressing forward with the election, Fiske said.

School officials hope the money will go further now, allowing the district to secure a very low interest rate and to get a new wing for about $200 a square foot.

The recession also is the reason the board reconsidered the $4.5 million request it originally planned to put before taxpayers.

“We have a $5.6 million bonding capacity; we were never looking to exhaust that,” Fiske said. “We listened to the community saying, ‘It’s a tough time. Can we do more with less?’”

If voters approve the bond request, property taxes on a home with a $100,000 taxable value would go up about $73 a year. Annual property taxes on a home with a $150,000 taxable value would increase about $109.

A simple majority will decide the vote June 15; all ballots must be returned to the district no later than 8 p.m. that day. The district is mailing 1,950 ballots to its active voters.

There have been several vocal opponents of West Valley’s bond request from people who have questioned the school board’s decision to run a bond election in a recession and from those who aren’t convinced of the need for expansion.

Several alternatives to a bond election have been proposed, including putting up a portable building. Trustees and school officials explored putting in 10 temporary classrooms for $2 million, Fiske said.

Ultimately, the board decided against that option, he said.

“Really the board was looking for a solution, not a temporary fix,” he said. “That had been the goal all along in that bond process.”

Other people have suggested creating space by asking out-of-district students to leave. But only about 18 students at the school don’t live in the district, Fiske said, so the space the school would save is negligible.

West Valley would also lose money those students generate, both from state funding and from the $1,000 in tuition each student brings in annually.

Already the school’s limited space has forced Fiske to reject new out-of-district students whose attendance would have jeopardized class sizes, he said.

“I’ve turned away more parents in the last three years than in the seven years before that,” he said.

Another suggested alternative to a bond election is “carving off” parts of the district, as Fiske puts it.

Some subdivisions in the West Valley school district have been annexed into the city of Kalispell; their infrastructures are part of the city, but their students go to school at West Valley. Some bond opponents have suggested sending those students to school in Kalispell.

That move would do more harm than good, Fiske said.

It could get rid of 60 to 80 students in West Valley, relieving overcrowding pressure. But the school would lose funding from those students, both in enrollment-based funding from the state and from the houses that contribute to the district’s tax base.

Having fewer houses in the district means fewer taxpayers would be left to shoulder bonds already on the books, Fiske pointed out — although those bonds were refinanced recently, saving taxpayers about $320,000.

Taxes have been a major argument for bond issue opponents. In the last five years, local tax contributions to the district’s budget have increased 37 percent.

But that doesn’t mean individual property taxes have grown that much, Fiske said. More people moved into the district, increasing the tax base — and spreading out the payment over more homes. There are 300 new registered voters in the West Valley district, he said, so there clearly are new families in the district.

“We have more people paying the bill, so to speak,” Fiske said. “Some people’s taxes have gone down.”

Growth is further evidenced in the number of mills in taxation this bond issue will cost. When voters approved the $1.9 million bond issue in 2000 that paid for a new gymnasium, library and six classrooms, the cost was 60 mills, Fiske said.

This bond issue would cost about 39.5 mills, he said.

“That disparity in itself is enormous,” he said. “That could only speak to growth.”

Several people have asked Fiske what will happen if the bond issue fails.

“Plan B is a classroom on the stage,” he said.

It won’t be easy teaching a classroom on the stage with other students eating in the lunchroom next to it, Fiske said.

The school has also considered using temporary walls to “eke out” a couple classrooms in the lunchroom — but that would eliminate students’ area to gather and eat lunch.

They would have to pick up their meals and eat in their classrooms, Fiske said.

There is “no next place” at the school to accommodate students, he added.

“This is the time,” he said of the bond issue.

“By waiting, we have another year of growth ahead of us. ... It may not be in the 40s we’ve seen [in new students in a single year], but I’m guessing we’ll still see 15-plus students.”

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.