The Crookston School District multi-use athletic complex referendum vote was held on Tuesday, February 14, at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, and school district residents came out in full force with 225 absentee ballots and 1,491 people voting in person for a total of 1,716 votes with 1,010 yes votes to 706 no votes. The referendum passes by 304 votes.
Superintendent Dave Kuehn expressed appreciation to the community. “We’re humbled, yet excited, and it’s awesome news, but we’re very thankful and humbled that our community and stakeholders supported this referendum, and now we can move forward with some of the planning now. A lot of hard work went into the informational campaign by many different people. We appreciate all the efforts and feel blessed that our community supported this referendum. It’ll be a great thing not only for the school district but for the community, too,” said Kuehn. “We always talked about in our informational campaign that this is something that we believe the district and community can be proud of, and we want to start putting forth some of the planning that will go into this new multi-use complex.”
With the referendum’s passing, the School District will meet Wednesday for a special meeting to debrief the board about the timeline and will start meeting with the school’s architect to begin planning the referendum’s construction and purchasing some items for it.
The ballot asked voters to vote for a $4,965,000 referendum.
The estimated costs for the project are $4,964,671 with a bond issue total of $4,965,000, with the artificial turf field’s construction costing $1,182,000 and the track’s construction costing $837,000. The grandstand and press box’s installation cost $387,000, the lighting/electrical work cost $715,000, and the Site work cost $924,000. The construction cost for the Concessions Stands and Bathrooms would be $178,000, with other contingency costs equaling about $741,571.
The community could start seeing some work done behind the school as soon as this summer once a proper plan is made. “You don’t want to put everything ahead of things. We needed to pass the referendum, and I think the next step is to plan accordingly. As we get the information, we will share that with our stakeholders, but they’ll definitely see some action behind the school this summer with dirt work and things happening. Hopefully, they’ll be able to provide us with more completion or timeline in terms of how all of those pieces, the field, work of the field, artificial turf, bleachers, press box, and the track, how all of those things will come together, and hopefully, the best scenarios we can do some things this fall,” Kuehn explained. “We’re working on a timeline sometimes that construction is not always as fast as it used to be, and sometimes securing certain materials have been more difficult to get. Hopefully, we’ll know more as we work with our architect and construction manager on putting together an appropriate timeline.”
The first time the district asked the voters to pass a referendum in August 2022, it failed by nine votes (842 to 833).
Kuehn and the Crookston School District thank all who came out to support the referendum passing for the district and the community. “On behalf of the district, just a huge thank you,” said Kuehn. “We’re very humbled and appreciative that we can move forward and put a very awesome facility out the back doors of our High School, and something I think, for many years, will be a great place for our youth, school district programs, Phy Ed. Classes to have the ability to use it throughout the school year.”
