Four local school districts – Crookston, Fertile-Beltrami, Fisher, and Red Lake Falls – will all hold special elections on November 5 regarding issuing bonds or the use of the remaining proceeds from past bonds. In the Crookston District, voters will vote on whether to repeal the operating referendum and replace it with a lower referendum and to authorize the bond issuance of building bonds for a bus garage. In the Fertile-Beltrami District, voters will vote on how the district can use funds left over from a 2017 bond issuance, and the Fisher District will ask voters to approve the issuance of building bonds for remodeling, renovating and/or expanding the school.
CROOKSTON SCHOOL DISTRICT
The Crookston School District’s first question will be on the operating referendum asking voters to repeal the current referendum of $604.51 per pupil and replacing it with a referendum for $523.10 per pupil. The reduction of $84.41 reflects the transfer of the Crookston Community Pool’s operations from the school district to the City of Crookston, said Crookston Superintendent Jeremy Olson. “The reason for that reduction is because we’re not operating the pool any longer,” said Olson. “That was the portion of dollars spent on the pool that is now going off. We’re only asking for the educational portion of that referendum moving forward. So, we’re asking taxpayers to pay less in taxes next year on the operating referendum because it’s only covering the education needs for the district for the next 10 years.”
The second question on the ballot is for approval to authorize the district to issue general obligation school building bonds for an amount not to exceed $2,985,000 for a new bus garage. The district is seeking a 10-year bond for the project rather than a 16-year bond, which with projected interest, saves about $1 million. Olson said the current bus garage currently meets codes from 1935, and a renovation would require the garage to achieve the same codes as a new building. “We are looking at a bus garage to meet our current and future needs for transportation,” said Olson. “If you’ve been through our bus garage, you’ll notice it’s not in great shape. Some comments have come – why don’t you put money into fixing it up and making do with what you have? The problem with doing any substantial changes with our current bus garage is it currently sits at 1935 codes. If we do major renovations, we now have to bring it up to current 2019 codes, which will get very, very expensive. So, a lot of the things that are driving the cost of our current bus garage proposal are the same things we’d have to put into a retrofit on our current bus garage location. And then you’d still have a 1935 building which you put a bunch of money into which I don’t think is a good use of taxpayer dollars.”
If the project’s bids come in lower than the maximum bond amount of $2.9 million before bonds are sold, the district can reduce the bond amount or if the bids were to come in lower after the bonds were sold they could be returned to the taxpayer over two years explained Olson. “While the bonding authority is at the $2.9 million level, that is our maximum bonding authority,” said Olson. “If our bids come in very cost-effective and low, those dollars would then be returned to taxpayers through two different methods. If it comes in less, it would allow the district to either bond for less or if we’ve already sold the bonds to return those dollars through the levy over the next two years.”
The Crookston School District has information regarding its referendum questions available on its webpage by clicking here, which includes a tax calculator showing the impact voting yes on both questions would have on a property based on its valuation. Additionally, the district will provide public bus garage tours of the current facility at 115 E. 4th Ave. on Thursday, October 24, from 4:00 to 5:45 p.m., and hold a public information meeting on the referendum questions after the tours at 6:00 p.m. in the Crookston High School Auditorium.
Voters in the Crookston District can vote absentee at the Crookston School District Office located inside door ten on the east side of Crookston High School. Voters in all precincts and City of Crookston Wards will have a combined polling place on November 5 at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, 1214 University Ave.
FERTILE-BELTRAMI SCHOOL DISTRICT
The Fertile-Beltrami District will ask voters to vote on whether the district can use $770,000 from a past bond sale for additional projects by voting yes. Or if they vote no, they are voting that the district should use those funds to pay off the interest on that past bond. Fertile-Beltrami Superintendent Brian Clarke said the district’s question is unique because it asks voters how the district should use dollars they’ve already collected. “Our question is a little unique to what some of the other districts have going,” said Clarke. “It was a board-approved levy a couple of years ago for a health and safety project to take care of some asbestos removal, the heating plant, and some other structural kinds of things. The school board has the authority to bond out for a project as long as it’s approved by the State of Minnesota, and that’s what the school board did. Interestingly enough, the bids came in quite a bit lower than the expected dollar figure on the project, so there were some funds left over. When you have remaining funds, what the state requires is that you ask the voters in your district to either approve the use of those funds for other related projects or the dollars left over could go against the interest-only portion of the bond. Ours is a little bit different than an operating referendum, a levy, or a bond for a building project. These are dollars that were leftover from a board-approved levy a couple of years ago, and we’re asking on voters to weigh in on how those dollars are used.”
Clarke said that over the past couple of years, the district has identified a range of additional projects they could use the funds for if the voters allow it. “Over the last couple of years, we’ve had some input from community, staff, and school board members, of course,” said Clarke. “There is a list of projects in any school, just like your house. There is always something to do. So, we’ve things from some lighting replacement in some classrooms that didn’t get updated in our project a couple of summers ago to some window replacement. The windows on the east side of the building are pretty aged and could stand to be replaced — possibly some restroom upgrades and even a few updates in some high school classrooms. There is a range of projects, and we’re waiting to find out after that November 5 election if there are some additional dollars that can be used from this question. And so that will be kind of the defining point when we’ll figure out what we can or should proceed ahead with.”
The Fertile-Beltrami School District serves as the absentee ballot location, and the combined polling place on November 5 will be the Community Center, 101 S Mill St.
FISHER SCHOOL DISTRICT
The Fisher District will ask voters to approve the issuance of general obligation school building bonds for remodeling, renovations, and/or expansion of Fisher School not to exceed $3,695,000. Fisher Superintendent Evan Hanson said there are several projects the funds would be used for, including an upgrade to the HVAC system. “We’ve got some security upgrades we’re looking to for the main entrance,” said Hanson. “We’ll be doing some renovations to locker rooms and restrooms to make sure everything is ADA compliant. We had a home economics room which we now use as an agriculture room, and our career and technical education have been expanding a lot, so probably looking at the additional of a greenhouse and renovation that space to make it more agriculture and career technical education appropriate. Probably the biggest aspect of it is upgrades to our HVAC system to make sure everything is universal all the way through and also some building envelope repair. One of those things is probably resurfacing the playground.”
The HVAC system upgrade would tie the three different sections of the school into a universal system. Hanson said the security upgrades to the front of the school would direct all traffic to the office rather than allowing access to the entire building. “We are looking at directing all traffic to the main office,” said Hanson. “Currently, once you are buzzed into the building, you have access to the entire building. So, at times when students are here, and school is in session, anybody that comes into the building would report in through the main office.”
Voters in the Fisher School District can vote absentee at the district office. On November 5, the combined polling place will be the Fisher School Library.
RED LAKE FALLS SCHOOL DISTRICT
The Red Lake Falls School District has been working towards finding facility solutions since 2015 in a process that has included gaining feedback from the community and staff while developing a plan for its facilities. In 2016, the school board executed the first phase of its plan by performing necessary updates to both Lafayette High School and J.A. Hughes Elementary. The next phase is to address space constraints the J.A. Hughes Elementary.
The first of two questions on the ballot will be the renewal of the operating referendum. Red Lake Falls Superintendent Jim Guetter said Red Lake Falls updates their operating referendum every five years, a plan that has worked well for the district. “The district has usually done five-year operating referendums,” said Guetter. “And it’s working good with some other legislative changes and should be sufficient for the next five years.”
The second question is for the issuance of general obligation building bonds up to $8.4 million. Guetter said there are currently several challenges sound, accessibility for people with disabilities, and gym space. “The elementary school is about 50 years old,” said Guetter. “There have been issues in that the cafeteria and gymnasium are shared. That’s created a lot of challenges especially as over 50 years we’ve started serving breakfast and lunches and try to make sure we have small class sizes. The challenge of trying to use it for breakfast, lunch, physical education and recess when you can’t go outside. It’s a unique building in that it was built with an open concept. I believe there would be 12 classrooms on what we call the inner part that is open to the library and has a set of windows looking over the river with a beautiful view. Whenever there is any activity in the library such as rehearsals for musicals or anything else that is a large group it reverberates through the school. So, a lot of distractions and the staff in the school have made it work over the years however we do feel we can improve what we are doing by enclosing those classrooms.”
Guetter added that currently they have some class sizes of around 34 students and would like to become a two-section school for each grade level to keep class sizes closer to 20 students. “Also, with the needs of students from special ed, title programs, alternate delivery of specialized instruction services for math and reading – a good intervention program to keep kids on grade level so they don’t get that special ed tag if it’s not needed, we need small group rooms for all those,” said Guetter. “We don’t have enough rooms to be a full section school for kindergarten through sixth grade. And we’ve seen the last two years a pretty good increase in student numbers, so we need more classrooms. There are really three phases to it – enclose the existing classrooms, add some classrooms and also add a gymnasium.”
Voters in the Red Lake Falls School District can vote absentee at the district office at 404 Champagne Ave. And the combined polling place for November 5 will be at the Red Lake Falls City Hall, 108 2nd Street SW from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m.
