Voters reject building reserve levy
Roy Beekman of Smith Valley turns in his ballot to voting judge Carole McAtee on Tuesday morning at Smith Valley School. The school was open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. for voting on the building reserve and technology levy.
Taxpayers in Kalispell Public Schools’ high school district have rejected a building reserve and technology levy request for the second time in 17 months.
Election results are not yet final, but preliminary numbers from Tuesday’s election indicate that voters overwhelmingly denied Kalispell’s $6 million building reserve levy request.
According to the unofficial results, 2,975 people supported the levy request, while 4,630 people rejected it. Voter turnout was about 25 percent.
“The only place we had a successful yes vote was with our walk-in voters at the fairgrounds,” Superintendent Darlene Schottle said.
Those are the voters who live within the Kalispell elementary district. Other voters, most of whom rejected the levy, live in outlying districts and send their children to high school in Kalispell.
The levy went down at every polling site outside Kalispell, except at Pleasant Valley, where one person voted in its favor and another person voted against it.
Absentee voters also rejected the levy, with 3,260 people voting against it on their mail ballots and 1,669 supporting it.
Schottle called the results depressing and disheartening.
A similar vote happened in 2009, when voters rejected a $4.1 million high school building reserve levy request. They approved a $2.8 million elementary request at the same time.
In that election, voters within the Kalispell elementary district supported the high school request, but the issue was rejected in all but one rural district — and in Creston it passed by only two votes.
Had voters approved the district’s most recent request, money would have been levied over five years to pay for building and technology projects throughout the district, which includes Flathead and Glacier high schools, the H.E. Robinson Vo-Ag Center, Linderman Educational Center, the auxiliary services building on East Washington Street and the central office above the Flathead County Library — almost 638,000 square feet of building space and 87 acres of land.
Flathead High School would have received about half the levied money, including $900,000 for a fire suppression system to bring the building up to code. That sprinkler system is necessary, according to school officials and the Kalispell Fire Department.
How Flathead will be brought up to code without the levied funds isn’t clear. District officials have said they won’t close the building.
School officials have said that without the building reserve levy, necessary building and technology expenses — including required repairs and software license renewals — could cost the district’s general fund budget an extra $435,000 a year. The 2011-12 general fund budget already is facing at least a $500,000 shortfall.