PORT ANGELES — Placing two separate school tax levies before Port Angeles School District voters in last week’s election may have been a mistake, says the leader of the pro-levies campaign committee.
“We didn’t really promote the passage of the levies,” said Randy McHone, chairman of Port Angeles Citizens for Education, or PACE, on Friday.
“We relied on our own yes voter base, but I don’t think we sold it as hard as we should have.”
Updated election results Thursday showed that the district’s maintenance and operations, or M&O, replacement levy and the less expensive capital technology levy failed to garner the 60 percent “supermajority” of votes needed to win.
The four-year, $26.8 million M&O levy received only 55.9 percent of yes votes.
The $3.6 million capital technology levy, also for four years, did worse, getting only 51.6 percent of yes votes.
Speaking Friday evening after the first PACE meeting since the Feb. 8 deadline for voters to drop off or mail in their levy ballots, McHone said that PACE ran a less-than-effective campaign.
Gary Cohn, Port Angeles School District superintendent who during his off hours is also a member of the PACE committee, agreed.
Phone campaign
“The PACE levy committee strategy was a person-to-person phone campaign, and it just didn’t reach enough yes voters,” Cohn said.
“Of the two dozen reasons people have shared with me [for both levies not passing], that seems to me the reality of this election.”
Asked if the School Board’s decision to place two simultaneous levy requests on a single ballot, McHone said it might have been.
“In retrospect, maybe,” McHone said.
“But in the past, when [other] districts had put an M&O levy together with a bond levy, people were able to distinguish between the two.
“People [in this election] were a little confused.”