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player ready...The Oak Park Elementary School District 97 Board of Education president said during a recent meeting that it will be a “heavy slog” to convince voters to approve an operating referendum that would result in an increase on their property tax bills.
Voters in District 97 will be asked come April to approve two separate referendums allowing the school district to issue $57.5 million in school building bonds and to raise the limit on what school officials can request in property tax dollars each year.
The board voted unanimously Jan. 10 to place both referendums on the April 4 ballot.
Voters will also be asked to approve a 1 percent increase in the property tax extension rate totaling an additional roughly $13.3 million in revenue. According to a district presentation, property owners with an annual $10,000 property tax bill would see an increase of $740, or $74 per every $1,000 they currently pay.
According to a district presentation, the $57.5 million bond issuance will not impact residents’ property tax bills because they’ll “essentially renew the existing capital bonds issued in 1999 that funded the middle schools and elementary building upgrades.”
The increase in tax revenue will, district officials estimate, gradually bring the district’s fund balance up to 27 percent of its operating budget in five years time based on current projections for enrollment, expenditures and state funding, wrote Chris Jasculca, senior director of policy, planning and communication for District 97, in an email interview following the meeting.
In recent months, school officials have said that the district’s fund balance would go into the red next year in the absence of dramatic cuts to services or the passage of a referendum.
Voters last approved an operating referendum in 2011, and according to a district presentation, officials viewed the measure as a “stopgap” and predicted a new operating referendum would be required sometime between 2017 and 2019.
School officials have cited increases in enrollment as a key factor driving the need for an increase in tax revenue. According to the district’s presentation, this past fall marked the first time in 40 years that enrollment surpassed 6,000 students.
Board officials discussed how best to explain to the community the need for the operating referendum.
“I think the enrollment story is the lead topic,” said board member Holly Spurlock. She said the district needs to explain to taxpayers that the massive influx of students to the district stems from people with school-aged and younger children moving into homes previously occupied by residents with no school-aged children. Because the homes were already built rather than newly constructed, the district did not see a rise in property tax revenue commensurate with the costs of educating more kids, Spurlock said.
Board member Graham Brisben said approval of the operating referendum would essentially mean that the district can continue to “deliver the education we’ve become accustomed to with this surging number of kids.”
Board President Jim Gates said selling voters on the referendum this year is “going to be much tougher” than it was six years ago because the additional revenue is required for the district to reach its longterm goals, which may be seen as esoteric or amorphous, rather than to pay for a concrete initiative like a playground or a school building.
If the bond issuance is approved, approximately $37.6 million will be used to keep buildings operational and their “core functionality” intact, including upgrades that would make facilities compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Acts and work on fire alarms, lighting, power distribution, roof and plumbing repairs, according to a district presentation. The remaining roughly $20 million would be used to convert existing spaces into learning areas and for the creation of additional classrooms at Abraham Lincoln Elementary and Longfellow Elementary schools, according to the presentation.
Board members and district employees are barred from advocating for or against a referendum, according to Jasculca. He wrote that the board is able only to provide “factual information” about the referendums.
Multiple organizations have expressed an interest in hosting public forums or meetings about the referendums, and Jasculca wrote that the district hopes to have specific dates, times locations for these events finalized in the coming days.
Lee V. Gaines is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.