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Florence School District referendum up for vote Tuesday

FLORENCE, Wis. — The Florence County School District will try again Tuesday to gain voter approval on an operational referendum that failed in November after being in place since 2005.

The measure is set to expire at the end of the school year. If it falls short again, changes in state law dictate the district will have to wait two years until it can put it back on the ballot. This measure would keep the tax rate for the next school year the same as the current year at 9.75 mills — or $9.75 per $1,000 of taxable property value, about $975 on a $100,000 home, said Ben Niehaus, district administrator.

The district is seeking to draw about $1.25 million for 2021-22, the same as the current referendum amount. It would increase to $1.3 million in 2022-23, $1.4 million in 2023-24 and $1.5 million in 2024-25. This is the fifth operational referendum since 2005.

But the mill rates are projected to decrease slightly each of the first three years of the new referendum, with the only increase being in the fourth year, 2024, when it is forecast to be 9.62 mills, lower than the 2019 and 2020 mill rates of 9.75, according to the district.

“There is a misconception about the referendum,” school board member Jim Gehlhoff said. “It’s not an add-on or an additional referendum; it’s a recurring one and the old one’s expiring. Our levy is being maintained.”

Gehlhoff believes the last referendum failed due to a lack of information to the voters. “We didn’t do our job to get the message out that it was not an additional referendum,” he said.

Since then, the district has taken steps to outline what’s involved to district residents. Fliers were sent out with details. Board members and Niehaus attended a town board meeting to explain the referendum.

“Ben has done a lot more communication on the internet and social media, written a lot more in the paper,” Gehlhoff said.

If the referendum fails, the district would be able to operate for a year or two, until the fund balance runs out. The worst-case scenario, Gehlhoff warned, would be the district forced to dissolve, something that nearly happened in 2004 before residents passed the current measure.

“If you do dissolve, you still have to operate, more than likely, operate in this building. But you’d be under a neighboring district. Our taxpayers would pay their levy. Your taxes would actually go up. We didn’t learn about it until the last time we had this big problem,” Gehlhoff said.

“I think we’re pretty responsible with the money. If there’s money left, we give it back,” said Don Dumke, school board president. “We have responsibility to the taxpayers and responsibility as a board. There’s times when we asked for levies that we thought we needed and it turned out it was additional revenue, so we didn’t take the full amount. We got criticized for that, too. It’s not a slush fund. It’s someone’s hard-earned money and we take that seriously.”

Some members of the public believe teachers and administration are paid too much, but board member Jim Churchill disputes that. “We’re at the average, middle of the road, of compensation,” he said.

Teachers no longer have retirement packages the way they did years ago, another misconception by the public.

Florence County School District receives very little state aid because they are considered rich in terms of property values. When an addition $230 million was put into general education, Florence County received none of the money. In fact they have lost 15% each year since 1993, Gehlhoff said.

“We’re doing our best to control costs. We optimize as much as we can,” Gehlhoff said. The district is part of consortium that shares insurance costs. The share about 10 employees with neighboring districts and share food service with the Niagara School District. They provide and charge for Spanish classes.

“We continue to look at ways to make everything as efficient as possible. We’re always looking at ways to improve that,” Churchill said.

All three board members have had children graduate from the Florence County District and they believe their children received a quality education.

“Not just in the classroom but on the sports fields,” Dumke said. “Almost all of our athletes are honor students. So they have to balance that. They learn how to balance that and that’s what they do good in college because they learned how to balance that.”

They also provide opportunities for non-college students, he added.

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