NCSD bond proponents, opponents might look to Grinnell as example

GRINNELL — As the Newton Community School District board of education moves toward a public vote on a multi-million-dollar general obligation bond election, the board will be looking at other Iowa school districts and their recent successful and failed attempts to pass bonds related to replacing or rebuilding schools.

Waukee and Johnston are two fast-growing, urban central Iowa districts that have passed bonds recently for new school construction, but it took Johnston a couple of tries. Johnston squeaked by with a $41-million bond passage to build a new high school in June 2013 after a $51 million proposal had failed the previous year.

Other Iowa districts have struggled with passing bonds. Cedar Falls, after failing with an initial $118 million proposal, came back in June with a $36 million scaled-down revision, but that failed with only a 57-percent approval by voters. A 60-percent “super majority” is needed to pass school bonds in Iowa, per state law.

A much smaller district, Denver, failed with two proposals in recent years, even though both were only for about $7 million. The first one failed by only 64 votes; the June 30 election ended with a sound 2-to-1 defeat.

Closer to Jasper County, the Grinnell-Newburg School District proposed a $28 million bond issue to replace aging facilities, but it failed in early April by a considerable margin. There were 1,849 “no” votes to only 1,305 in favor, with a 60-percent approval needed for passage. The Grinnell-Newburg district includes a few precincts that incorporate Jasper County residences.

The Newton Daily News, with the help of Grinnell-Newburg Superintendent Todd Abrahamson, takes a look at the election involving Newton’s next-door neighbor school district to the east, with some important similarities and differences between the two districts and their recent proposals.

“The super-majority is a hard sell,” Abrahamson said. “I was told it often takes more than one try. It just takes an efficient, effective effort to get the message out, and it sometimes takes two or three tries.”

The vote

About 35 percent of registered voters who live in the Grinnell-Newburg district — what Jasper County Auditor Dennis Parrott called “extremely high” for a school bond — voted in the April 7 election. Out of those 3,130 voters, 1,828 voted against the proposal, or 58.5 percent.

Only 1,302 voted in favor of the bond.

Four of the five voting precincts had more votes against the proposal than in favor, with the rural precinct (comprised of residents of the districts who don’t live in Grinnell) had the highest ratio of no-to-yes votes, shooting down the proposal with a 74-percent disapproval. Almost 20 percent of the bond votes were by absentee ballot.

Abrahamson said voter turnout, while high, didn’t get enough “yes” voters to the polls.

“Some people actually told me they didn’t vote because they just thought it would pass,” he said.

Dilemmas: What Grinnell and Newton have in common

Grinnell-Newburg and Newton have some aging buildings that are a drain in massive overhead and monthly costs for heating, cooling and power. Age and heavy additions have stressed the limits of buildings that were meant to house fewer students and staff — and with far less demand in electricity and technology.

Abrahamson said the burden of proof is on the folks who will be spending the public’s money on the infrastructure.

“With private-sector layoffs here and there, fluctuating ag prices and an older population on fixed incomes, it’s tough to show the school needs in a convincing way,” he said.

Newton has several aging schools that will have expensive needs in the years ahead. However, the collection of classrooms with the combination of the most students and the greatest need for renovation is the Berg Complex, with major heating, cooling and other environmental and ergonomic issues that can’t be resolved without an estimated $17.6 million in renovations.

The exact price tag for the planned all-new build of Berg won’t be determined until the design phase of the complex is complete. However, Newton won’t be asking taxpayers for more than about $28 million, because that’s where a mandated formula sets the district’s bond capacity.

Grinnell-Newburg’s shrinking enrollment decreases funding for salaries and certain academic programs, and an increase or further decrease wouldn’t impact the local need for updated facilities.

Newton and Grinnell
situations: Major differences

Grinnell-Newburg had approximately 1,500 students for this year’s certified enrollment, and is shrinking, while Newton is still about twice that size, and largely stabilized. The district has 138 fewer students in 2014-15 than it had in 2011-12, creating a funding-per-student shortfall of about $900,000.

As families move from rural to urban areas to chase employment, fewer students are staying in Grinnell throughout their schooling years, and even fewer are relocating to the area. Newton lost about 500 students between 2002 and 2012, but only lost about 150 over the next three school years, although the average household income in the district has dropped considerably.

The two district’s bond proposals are proposed to vastly different tax bases. Grinnell is slightly more than half the size of the City of Newton in population, with its employment base largely divided between agriculture and Grinnell College, and Newton being more ag/industrial.

Newton is only proposing to only tear down walls at one site in its replacement of Berg, while the Grinnell-Newburg bond proposal defeated in April would have put four “neighborhood schools” out of service as a cost savings. Even if the Grinnell community can re-purpose all four buildings without tearing any down, no longer using traditional schools — filled with generations of memories — is apparently more than many residents can stomach.

Abrahamson doesn’t quite follow the tie to the idea of neighborhood schools, as Grinnell hasn’t had that kind of arrangement for years.

“It’s really been since 1997 that we haven’t had neighborhood schools,” he said. “We’ve already moved away from that.”

In the spring of 2013, the GNSD formed a task force charged with putting together a long-term facilities plan to help alleviate costs of operating aging buildings.

Newton’s board created a three-person facilities subcommittee made up of board members last spring, but has not publicized a major detailed facilities plan that calls for remodeling or replacement of schools.

Berg — probably the biggest drain of resources and source of environmental and ergonomic concerns from staff — has been the focus. The complex has been the site of mold clean-up, heating and cooling inconsistencies, plumbing nightmares and odd smells that do not seem to exist anywhere else in the district.

As Newton Community School District President Sheri Benson said after the spring vote to make Berg a grades 5-8 facility, “we’re going to have families who have children at this facility for four years, so let’s make it a centerpiece of our capabilities.”

The campaign

The task force helped create a plan which eventually led to a bond proposal that, for about $28 million, involved replacing four buildings with two: A new preschool-through-fifth-grade structure, and a repurposed middle-school (formerly Iowa Telecom) building that would house the sixth through the eighth grades.

The proposed tax impact would have been a maximum Increase of 49 cents per $1,000 net taxable value. A home valued at $175,000 would increase by $45.41 per year, or $3.78 per month.

The price tag of $28 million is actually only 67 percent of the $42 million needed for the project, with the remaining $14 million to be paid out of SAVE sales-tax funds. The costs were determined through study and consultation with architects, consultants and facilities professionals, and were marketed using a bond committee, forums, signage and a its own website, grinnelltigerbond.org.

Leigh McGivern of Basicleigh Communications, who was invited to speak to the Newton school board and administrators at Monday’s board work session, said Grinnell didn’t tailor its message to local voters.

“I understand Grinnell pretty much ‘cookbooked’ what Johnston did,” McGivern said. “They did not customize it to fit the community; the people who live there.”

Abrahamson said he feels the people involved with promoting a “yes” vote were doing the right things.

“We had all kinds of presentations, and addressed all the naysayers’ concerns about everything from taxes to the conditions in the Telecom building,” he said. “We even went with some signage.”

What’s next?

The district moved its central offices into Grinnell-Newburg High School classrooms, saving $43,000 annually.

“We just have to find creative ways to sustain five buildings,” Abrahamson said. “We took an elaborate online survey, and we’ll have a lot of discussions in the year ahead about what we’ll do next.”

Contact Jason W. Brooks at 641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com