Northbrook/Glenview Elementary District 30’s facilities task force voted Thursday to cut the size of its recommendation for a building referendum as a gesture to mail-polled voters, many of whom indicated they were against the measure.
So, instead of the originally-proposed $39.5 million ballot measure, the task force of residents and staff plan to propose a $36.3 million referendum. The task force, by its bylaws, needed a two-third’s majority to do so, and barely made it with a 21-7 vote.
The proposal, if accepted by the school board, would keep all the money allotted for rebuilding Maple School, the district’s middle school, but drop the cash for additions to Willowbrook and Wescott, the elementary schools.
The seven who opposed the change all said they wanted the referendum measure to go forward as originally proposed.
Willowbrook and Wescott schools are already full, their principals said, but they would be able to keep up standards for about six years. That’s when the district expects to begin receiving about $1.8 million annually as the tax increment financing district for The Glen shuts down. Life-safety and accessibility work at the two schools would still be included.
It was hard to swallow for some, like second-grade teacher Ann Angel.
“We are a district with a philosophy: we will make it work,” she said. “But they way I look at this, if the physical space doesn’t get improved, the value of education will go down.”
But many task force members said that if they didn’t postpone the additions to the smaller schools, they’d be more likely to lose the referendum and the key rebuild of the aging, and, they say, outmoded Maple.
Election consultant Paul Hanley said there were many positives in the survey, which drew completed forms from 1,005 of 7,280 registered voters. But 28 percent of respondents said they would definitely vote no on the referendum and 16 percent would probably vote no. Of those identified as likely to vote in the April election, 30 percent were in the no category with 15 percent probably no, Hanley said.
Hanley said backers of winning referendums, seeing such numbers, reduce the cost. In this case, it drops from $51.76 per $1,000 in taxes to $47.55.
Task force member Harley Korman, seeing that positive voters were at 48 percent, lobbied to keep the whole $39.5 million and just campaign hard.
“We already did scale it down,” Korman said, referring to a few million saved by eschewing new district offices in the rebuilt school, opting to rent elsewhere.
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“Our job is to educate the consumers out there,” he said. “If we scale it back, we still haven’t educated those people.”
Things that the electorate doesn’t know, he added, include that the district is debt-free.
“There’s a chance that you lose?” he asked. “There’s a risk in everything. Let the chips fall where they may.”
Member Carlo Cavallaro retorted that with a loss in April, another try wouldn’t come around for another year, and in the interim, much of about $15 million in required life safety and maintenance money would have to be spent at Maple, a building the district wants to raze. That might also require spending the $5.2 million in reserve funds the plan anticipates using toward the rebuilding project if the referendum passes.
Superintendent Brian Wegley said trying again after a loss would be daunting: “Doing something over again and expecting different results — that’s what Einstein called insanity.”
Member Jeff St. John said that a slimmed-down referendum is easier to sell.
“Now we can say, ‘We’re going to referendum to fix Maple, and here’s why.'”
Communication about the district’s physical needs has been difficult, Wegley said. A video on the subject on the district’s web site at www.d30facilities.org he said, “has 50 hits, and 42 of them are mine.”
The school board is scheduled to discuss the proposal at a 7:30 p.m. Dec. 8 meeting at Maple, 2370 Shermer Road, Northbrook. A vote on whether to go to referendum, and what size the referendum would be, will likely be taken Dec. 13, at the same time and place.
Twitter @IrvLeavitt