Wednesday, March 1, 2000
Lakota, Talawanda schools
BY SUE KIESEWETTER
Enquirer Contributor
HAMILTON — Two new schools would be built in the Lakota Schools district and Talawanda Schools would get a new high school if voters approve money issues each district has placed on the March 7 ballot.
In Lakota Schools, voters will be asked to approve a single 6.74-mill levy that includes a 4.9 mill bond issue and a 1.84-mill operating levy. If approved, taxes would increase by $206 annually for the owner of a house with a market value of $100,000.
Talawanda voters face two issues: a 4.6 mill bond issue that will raise $29.9 million and a 6.5 mill operating levy that will raise $2.86 million annually. The bond issue, if approved, would cost the owner of a house with a market value of $100,000 an additional $141 annually while the operating levy would cost that same homeowner an additional $199 annually in new taxes.
“We're going with a single ballot issue because we've heard from our community in the past that they get frustrated when we ask them for a bond issue and then an operating levy. They say we're nickel and diming them,” said Sandy Wheatley, president of the Lakota Board of Education. “This is an opportunity to do it all at once and not come back for four years.”
In Lakota, the $44.5 million bond issue will pay for construction of an elementary and junior school, and it would pay for projects in the first three years of a five-year capital improvements plan. Money would also be set aside to pay for land for future schools, upgrade technology and add a weight room, fieldhouse and classroom addition at Lakota East and West high schools.
In the Talawanda Schools, it is the second time voters will be asked to increase taxes. Last November, voters rejected a single ballot issue that included an operating levy and a slightly larger bond issue that also would have provided money to renovate elementary schools.
“We've reduced the bond issue by 12 percent by eliminating the elementary and middle school improvements,” Talawanda Superintendent Susan Cobb said of the ballot questions. “We kept the new high school and renovation of the high school into a grade K-5 elementary school.”
The operating dollars would allow the district to remain solvent and provide money to bring teacher salaries from the second-lowest in Butler County — behind the New Miami Schools — to the midrange, Ms. Cobb said. Without it, the district faces a $1 million deficit by June 2001 and a $3 million deficit the following year.
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