Loyal eyes another school referendum try in April

The Loyal School District Board of Education will take an “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” approach to obtaining the local tax money it says is needed to maintain normal operations as it is already planning a second revenue cap exemption referendum for April 2023.

Eight days after failure of a referendum to authorize extra local taxation of $1.1 million next year and $1.4 million for each of the subsequent four years, the Board on Nov. 16 began discussion of another vote. The Nov. 8 referendum was rejected on a 640-556 vote count, and that came eight months after local residents also voted down a $12 million facility expansion and renovation project.

The next possible election date is April 4, 2023, and District Administrator Chris Lindner said at a Nov. 19 meeting that Jan. 24 is the deadline for having another question on the ballot. Lindner said the district has “no option” other than to ask again for more money in local property taxes, if the district wants to keep its staff and programming at current levels.

The district this year is operating in the last year of a $675,000 cap exemption approved by voters four years ago. That extra revenue will disappear for the school’s 2023-34 budget, and if a replacement referendum is not approved, the district will have to slice spending to balance its budget. The district’s local property tax rate would fall dramatically without another cap exemption approval, but that would curtail available revenue to the point where current spending would not be possible.

Lindner said the Board needs to regroup and plan for another vote.

“The question is, where do we go now?” he said. “As I said before, if it did fail, we will come back in April for the spring election.”

Lindner said he will be meeting with a financial advisor to study financial numbers to see if the Board wants to come back with the same referendum question, or if it can pare back the amount it is asking in extra local taxes. The Board will discuss the issue further in December, and must make a final call by Jan. 24 to meet ballot printing deadlines.

“We’re going to work with a number of different scenarios,” Lindner said. “This is something we have to have to operate. We really have no option but to go back. This is something we need. We have to have it if we plan to keep the staff where we’re at and the programs. This is a necessity.”

The Board has not identified which budget areas it might cut if another referendum is not passed. Part of the plan for the last referendum was to use some of the firstyear money on maintenance items such as elementary parking lot underground storm sewer line replacement/ parking, and that is on hold for now.

Lindner said Loyal is not an outlier in needing extra property tax money, as most school districts in the state have also gone to referendum. The state funding formula is such that state revenues do not meet expenses, and a revenue cap imposed on schools by the state Legislature in the 1990s requires districts to get voter approval to exceed them.

“That’s not going to get fixed tomorrow so we have to have this as a way we combat that,” Lindner said of the state funding problem.

He also noted that the funding formula actually penalizes a district that spends less. A district’s state aid is based on how much it spends, so if Loyal loses its referendum income, its state financial help will drop even more.

“That hurts. It absolutely hurts for the aid we have been receiving,” Lindner said.

The Board discussed ways to better educate voters about the need to pass a referendum. Lindner noted that public information meetings held before this one were sparsely attended, and he suggested such means as a volunteer phone calling list and door-to-door visits as a way to improve education.

“We have to do whatever it takes,” he said. “We need to get some volunteers that will work at it. It has to be a collaborative effort.”

The Board’s next meeting is set for Dec. 21 at 7 p.m. In other discussion on Nov. 19, Lindner informed the Board that Loyal’s co-op football program with Greenwood will not begin until fall of 2024. The boards in both Greenwood and Loyal have approved the merger of the programs, but WIAA rules would not allow a combined team to be eligible for playoffs next season.