PORT TOWNSEND — Jefferson County Auditor Donna Eldridge said the election was too close to call, but the somber tone from supporters of the proposed Port Townsend School District bond showed a different outcome: The bond had failed again.
A $35.6 million bond to rebuild an elementary school and make sorely needed repairs at others was failing as of Tuesday night.
After 15,933 ballots were counted, the bond measure was losing by 5.04 percent.
A 60 percent supermajority is required to pass a school bond issue in Washington state.
The tally so far:
Approved: 4,115 or 54.96 percent.
Rejected: 3,372 or 45.04 percent.
Eldridge said 2,062 ballots were delivered to the courthouse late today and were not included in the nighttime results.
An additional 239 ballots will require additional inspection.
Ballots not included in Tuesday night’s count will be tallied Friday at a time not yet determined.
Ballots were sent to 22,160 registered voters across Jefferson County, and Tuesday’s tally included all ballots received by 2:30 p.m. Friday, or 71.89 percent of the possible total.
Results will be certified at 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 25.
Supporters of the bond attended Tuesday’s count at the courthouse and had similar responses to the situation.
“I’m sad,” said School Board Chairwoman Beth Young.
“I wasn’t expecting it to pass, but it’s still sad.”
Young said the vote in May, when the bond failed by less than 1 percent, was likely their last chance once the economy turned.
“We had a better economy then,” Young said.
“People are scared, and I sympathize with that, but this is a missed opportunity.
“It’s not going to get any cheaper to fix the problems.”
Schools Superintendent Tom Opstad said he was disappointed but that now he had to take the next step forward.
“We need to begin looking at a longer term plan,” he said.
“We have several options to look at for the next four to seven years and we need to figure out what changes we are going to make.”
$500,000 in cuts
The district must reduce operating costs by more than $500,000 a year to balance the budget, Opstad said at a town meeting.
Opstad said a consultant had informed the School Board that a way to achieve that was to close one of its facilities to accommodate all the district’s elementary students at one school in 2009.
Earlier this month, the Port Townsend School District announced one tentative plan if the bond failed again.
The plan without the bond includes closing and abandoning Grant Street Elementary and restructuring grades at the other schools.
“We have to ask ourselves, what is the best scenario given the situation where the bond doesn’t pass,” Opstad said at the town meeting.
“This is that plan.”
Kindergarten through third grade would be housed at Mountain View Elementary, because the facility has a full-size gym and a cafeteria.
Fourth through seventh grades would be located at Blue Heron Middle School, with eighth-grade students moving to Port Townsend High School.
The plan would eliminate the cost of operating one facility and likely balance the school district budget.
If this plan is followed, the district would need to defer needed upgrades to the facilities, see an increase in wear to the buildings and would need to develop a plan to patch the current buildings to work with the new class structure.
There would also be limited space for assemblies, library, lunch rooms and outdoor activities.
The school district was asking voters to approve a bond that would have primarily gone toward constructing a new school on the Grant Street campus to accommodate all of the district’s elementary students in 2010 after Mountain View Elementary is closed.
Also included in the measure were maintenance upgrades at the other schools, bus storage and maintenance shop repairs and district communications upgrades to the tune of $1.34 million.
The bond was first presented to voters in the May 20 special election, when it received 59.04 percent approval but failed to pass by the necessary supermajority.
________
Reporter Erik Hidle can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at erik.hidle@ peninsuladailynews.com.
