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The Salem School Levy Committee held an Informational Forum Tuesday ahead of November's impending election.
Nov. 7, will see voters give their final answer on the question of a 3.48-mill, 37-year property tax levy to fund the construction of a new K-8 school building. The levy committee said the intent of the forum was to ensure all voters had the full, true facts about the issue prior to casting their vote, whether in favor or against.
The levy seeks to raise Salem's 34% share of the $57 million total cost of the new school building which would be built at the 67-acre property that used to be Whinnery farm, in the city's Southeast corner. The 66% majority of the expense would be funded through an award from the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission. However, that 34% figure is deceptive, as it includes 16.5% which will be funded through a $10 million donation from the Salem Community Foundation to be paid in annual installments of $1 million, and 6.2% to be funded from community/industry public utilities; meaning the actual amount to be covered by taxpayers is only about 10%. The 3.48 mills also include .5 mills to ensure necessary funding for maintenance of the building.
If approved the actual property tax increase per $100,000 in property home valuation would be $96.25 annually or $8.02 monthly, and those that qualify for the homestead exemption pay $72.19 annually or $6.02 monthly for the first ten years. After 10 years those figures would decrease to $77 annually or $6.42 monthly, and $57.75 annually or $4.81 monthly for those that qualify for the homestead exemption for years 11-37. School Treasurer Mike Douglas said that these rates were for the full 3.48 mills, meaning they include the .5 mill for maintenance as well as the 2.98 mills for construction.
These figures differ from the existing ballot language, which separates the levy into its component elements of 2.98 mills for the construction of the building and .5 mill for maintenance, and lists their annual cost as $104 and $18, respectively, as the ballot language does not account for the contribution of the Salem Community Foundation. Douglas explained that the state requires the district to seek the full amount for funding on the ballot initiative to ensure funding is fully secured before the project can begin. Douglas said that each year the district would use the annual disbursement of $1 million from the Community Foundation to reduce the tax liability, and the Columbiana County Auditor's office would correspondingly reduce the annual collection to the above rates.
The evening, which saw attendance from over 100 Salem residents, featured informational videos, PowerPoints, and testimonials from committee, and community members on why they felt Salem voters should approve the levy, with perspectives from graduating students, educators, local business leaders, district administrators, and parents of Salem students. The meeting also saw a lengthy Q&A session where questions submitted by the public were addressed.
Levy Committee Chairman Dr. Austin Frederickson provided an overview of the levy and the scope of the current project, including information of the benefits of the new building and why it is needed, to "make sure everyone is on the same page about," the basics of the issue before other speakers expanded with their personal experiences and expertise.
Frederickson began by echoing recent statements from the district administration and the board of education explaining that the current levy addressed only the district's existing elementary buildings and the potential K-8 building, reminding residents that "whatever you've heard or read, the high school cannot be a part of this levy, there's no money in this levy that is touching anything about the high school other than moving the seventh and eighth grade." Frederickson also reminded attendees that the district only plans to demolish Reilly and Buckeye elementaries, with the youngest of the district's three elementary buildings, Southeast at 56 years old, set to be repurposed by the district.
Frederickson said that a new building would be designed to maximize the safety students from the onset, rather than attempting to retrofit security measures to buildings that were not designed with them in mind and would also include modern centralized technological infrastructure as well as centralized heating and cooling, which the current building lack. Frederickson, who serves as the district's volunteer physician, said that some of his student-patients with asthma have been experiencing complication due to issues with the existing building's HVAC systems, which would be negated by the new buildings centralized systems. Frederickson also said that the new building would have its own working kitchen facilities, something the existing elementary buildings lack, with food needing to be delivered to each building from the high school every school day as a result.
Frederickson also said that the centralized location would eliminate the struggles parents experience in relation to dismissal and student pick-up each day, especially those families that have students attending multiple buildings within the district. It was also argued that the construction of the new building itself would create jobs within the community.
Frederickson also echoed the district's explanations that the cost to repair and renovate the existing buildings was simply unrealistic, with the state refusing to contribute any funding for the repair of the buildings. The state recommends building new if the cost to bring a building up to standards reaches 77% of the cost to build new, a figure met or exceeded by the costs to renovate all three elementary buildings, with a feasibility study by the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission (OFCC) estimating the costs of repairs at Southeast at 77%, Reilly at 81%, and Buckeye at 78%. As a result, were the district to renovate the existing building rather than building a new building, the local funding required would be $30 million, more than double the $12.5 million in local funding required by the current plan, of which only about $9 million would be drawn from average taxpayers. Frederickson said that disparity represented the difference of about $8 a month under the current levy to roughly $51 a month if the district were to seek funding to renovate the existing buildings. Frederickson also reminded those in attendance that the amounts surrounding districts, with newer buildings were seeking were "two or four times higher."
Superintendent Sean Kirkland discussed the segmented nature of the district's plan, which he said was the only thing he could think of that might be giving people the false impression the district intends to replace the high school. Kirkland has explained at length in the past that the segmented approach secures the current funding offer from the OFCC of 67% in perpetuity, meaning that should the district ever need to replace the high school, that favorable offer would still be in place, but that there are no plans to do so, and any future plans would be decades away.
Kirkland explained that the segmented approach had been chosen over just building a single K-8 building because if the district had chosen the unsegmented plan, they would have been unable to include key features of the building like the in-house kitchen.
"What we were given, and what we're allowed to do through the OFCC was very clear to us. If we went through a Pre-K-8 building without a segment, we would not get the cafeteria or auxiliary gym, that were extremely important to us, and if we want strictly a Pre-K-6 building, none of that would happen," explained Kirkland. "So, what we had to do was go for segmented plan which is termed as Pre-K-12, and do it in segments, the first one is what we're talking about today. Now the second one is up to this community, 30 years, 40 years when I'm long dead and gone and this building is ready to be torn down, the community is then put in a pretty good position with those 67 cents on the dollar," said Kirkland.
OFCC Planning Director Bill Prenosil also explained that before any work can be done the OFCC requires a master plan, which includes any potential subsequent project be submitted before any work can be done. Prenosil said that while the plan includes the potential for construction of a future high school, that has no relation to the current levy, nor is the district under any obligation to ever do so.
"I think the reason it's confusing is because we [the OFCC] require a complete overall master plan before a district can do what we call a segment, which is just a part of the plan, so the overall plan shows the high school going away as state, but it's a future plan you have the option to do, not the requirement to do. The advantage of that is us showing it that way makes you eligible for this building because if we didn't do that you wouldn't have gotten a full K-8. I think the important thing to say is yes that's part of our paperwork but it's not part of this project, and it's not a requirement of the project, the only thing this district has signed to move forward with is this first segment, which is the K-8, and they're not required to do the future segment," said Prenosil.
Kirkland also discussed the district's plans regarding the existing elementary buildings, explaining that the state of Ohio offers the district three options -- to sell the building to their competition, demolish the building or to repurpose it. Kirkland has repeatedly said that selling the buildings to a competitor such as a charter school is not a real option, which leaves the district with the option to repurpose or demolish the existing buildings.
"This district is losing $1.8 million to open enrollment and charter schools on an annual basis right now, that is not a viable answer," said Kirkland.
Kirkland said the district intends to repurpose Southeast, and that there are many possibilities for how the building could be used available to the district, including housing the district's administrative offices, or use in district programming such as day care. The district's other two elementary buildings, Reilly and Buckeye, however, are slated for demolition, as the district does not see value in repurposing the building.
Kirkland said that while he understood the love and appreciation people have for the schools they attended, the district's aging buildings, like Reilly and Buckeye, simply were not built to accommodate the needs of the students and the community today.
"I went to Prospect School for seven years, from kindergarten through sixth grade, at that time they were the neighborhood school, the schools in this community were all neighborhood schools, they were all built so you could walk to them. They didn't think we were going to have all of one grade going to one school, pulling in 17 buses, cars for pickup and drop-off, they simply weren't built for that. McKinley wasn't built for that, Fourth Street wasn't built for that, Prospect wasn't built for that, and I can guarantee that Reilly and Buckeye were not. To a large extent neither was Southeast," said Kirkland.
Kirkland has previously said that while he doesn't expect it to happen, should a developer come forward with a plan and funding to make use of Reilly or Buckeye the board would consider it. Kirkland also said that there were many options for the use of the properties where Buckeye and Reilly were located, including expanded residential housing options and expansions and improvements to Sebo Stadium respectively.
Jock Buta, executive vice president of Butech Bliss and owner of the Salem Twin Cinema, said that a new school building would help attract new workers to the area, and the economic growth that would come with them. Buta explained that his company has difficulty recruiting people to come live and work in Salem, as when recruiting skilled workers from across the country and the world, they consistently cite the education system as their top factor in choosing where to live. Buta said that workers choose to live in other communities due to their newer facilities and technology, taking not only their income tax, but their grocery, and recreational spending back to their home communities with them, rather than remaining within Salem.
"If we fail to demonstrate to the community that we value the condition and quality of our schools especially when we have such a great opportunity before us, what message do you think that sends to potential residents about the value of education in this community, by approving this levy we show our commitment to education and to our children's future," said Buta.
Matt Mowery, a Salem High School teacher, whose wife is a teacher at Buckeye, and parent of two within the district, said he wanted to speak to "the unsure voter," as a fourth-generation community member. Mowery said that his son that attends Buckeye is unable to take music or art classes due to lack of space, and that the stage at Buckeye also is unusable. Mowery also said that all of the speakers at the forum were Salem alumni, and that they understood the attachment to the existing buildings, but wanted what was best for their home community.
"Keep in mind all the people here are Salem graduates. These aren't people from out of town that have come here to get new shiny things, these are people who have grown up in this town, live in this town, and didn't leave this town," said Mowery.
Allie Winner, who has been a teacher at Buckeye for 16 years and the mother of three children currently attending the district's elementary schools, discussed the stress of picking up students at multiple schools, which a single Pre-K-8 building would eliminate. Winner explained that Reilly and Southeast have dismissal at the same time, and all three buildings have different drop off and pick up procedures. At Buckeye all parents park and personally pick-up their child at the back door; while at Reilly parents are sorted into one of four lines and students are dismissed and walk to the car, where parents then wait until all students have been dismissed and safely entered their vehicles, and the lines are then dismissed one at a time in an alternating order; at Southeast all parents form one long line while they wait for students to be dismissed and enter their vehicle. Winner said these very different and often time-consuming dismissal processes made it difficult to choose which building to go to first and make it to the second on time when picking up students from multiple buildings.
"You can imagine why I was feeling torn as to which school and which line I should wager on first. In this moment I felt worried, stressed, and then I was racing from one school to another so I wouldn't be late. I know many parents deal with this on a daily basis. I know personally that our administrators, and teachers have do the very best that they can do to make drop-off and dismissal time as smooth, safe and effective as possible, but one thing we need to remember is that when they were meant to be neighborhood schools where most students walked to school, now they are city wide schools and we only have one entrance and one exit. Unfortunately, what it comes down to is drop-off and pickup is a stressful time for parents and it becomes dangerous for our students with all the traffic, long lines, and people rushing," said Winner.
Maintenance Supervisor Jason Austin discussed many of the issues the existing buildings faced that most residents were not aware of. Austin said that many of the building's existing systems had reached or exceeded their life expectancies, including piping, and electrical systems, many of which were impossible to repair or replace without tearing out entire walls or floors. Austin also said that the manufacturer of the main electrical system at Reilly Elementary had been out of business "for over 60 years," and that in his nearly 30 years working as an electrician he had "never seen another one of these." Austin also noted that Reilly and Buckeye both have steam heating systems "which can be difficult to control and contains much of the aging pipe systems," and that the boilers at Southeast had never been replaced in the school's 56-year existence. Austin also noted that until the 1990s, Reilly and Buckeye had both used coal for heat, and that the buildings were "still using portions of those systems." Austin said it was difficult to accurately portray the condition of aging schools, something he learned in his previous tenure with the Southeast School District.
"If you portray the condition as good, then people say we don't need new, and if you show too much bad people ask why we haven't taken better care of them. Through the years, especially prior to my employment here at Salem, I believe the maintenance staff has done a great job of keeping the schools operating, but at some point we will be forced to update whether preventatively or due to failure, my hope is that we're available to take advantage of this great opportunity that will provide new life to the schools and the community," said Austin.
The Q&A session saw many of the submitted questions already addressed by the evening's speaker, and the administration and committee members joined by Prenosil.
One of the questions asked was whether there would be a reduction in staff as the number of schools decreased. Kirkland said that he and the district was committed to preserving as many jobs as possible, and that when any reductions were made, they would be done "with class and dignity." Kirkland also said that the goal was for any cuts that did occur to be done through retirement and other similar avenues so the district "was not pushing anyone out the door because of a new building."
The disparity in the estimated costs of demolition was also questioned, and Prenosil explained that part of the expense of the demolition is the safe removal and disposal of hazardous materials, and that the disparity was the result of a higher concentration of these materials.
The timeframe in which the new school would be built if the levy was approved was also questioned. Prenosil explained that were the levy approved the required paperwork would begin immediately, and that "the rule of thumb," was a year to design the building, and around two years for construction depending on start time, for an estimate of three to four years.
The district previously attempted unsuccessfully to get the levy passed in the May 2, special election. At that time the levy failed with a vote of 907 (44.07%) for and 1,151 (55.93%) against. The board elected to present the question to the voters again in the general election in its June meeting with Kirkland explaining that himself, Treasurer Mike Douglas, and the board felt that the narrow margin of defeat and overall low voter turnout for the special election had "not expressed the whole community's viewpoint," on the issue.
Should the district be unable to pass the levy for a second time, it would lose both the offered $10 million gift from the community foundation, and the extremely favorable offer of 67% of the building expenses, becoming a lapse district and moving to the back of the line for future OFCC funding, with no guarantees that when the time comes again to receive a funding offer it will be as favorable.
mahart@mojonews.com