Bonneville School District to seek multimillion dollar levy renewals today
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Blake Jones, IdahoEdNews.com and Nate Sunderland, EastIdahoNews.com
IDAHO FALLS — The largest school levy request on Idaho ballots this election cycle will be a rerun in two respects.
On Tuesday, Bonneville Joint School District 93 will ask voters for the same amount per year that its two expiring levies provide. A two-year $5.8 million supplemental levy ($11.6 million in total) and a 10-year $2.8 million plant facilities levy ($28 million total) are both on their way out in 2020.
The vote will also be the second time in roughly two months the district has tried to renew its levies. On March 9, voters struck down a pair of heftier asks, for an annual tax of $3.8 million for a plant levy and $6.8 million for a supplemental levy. Those levies would have amassed $38 million and $13.6 million over their lifetimes, respectively.
D93 looks to avoid financial shortfall after levy failures; planning for new election in May
In March, the plant facilities levy pulled only 41 of the 60 percent support it needed to pass. The supplemental levy, which needed a simple majority, received 42 percent support.
“I think we have an obligation to go back out,” school board trustee Paul Jenkins told EdNews in March. He cited a local voter turnout of around 12 percent in the last election.
The district’s supplemental levy funds teacher and classified staff salaries, music programs, physical education classes and other operational costs, district spokesman Phil Campbell said in a video about the levy ask.
Some of those services will likely be cut if the levy fails, he said, though according to the district’s website, an injection of one-time federal coronavirus relief dollars could serve as a temporary stopgap.
The county is set to receive $11.2 million as part of the latest round of federal, though money must be used for select federally-approved purposes. The district is set to receive $11.2 million of that.
Since this is a renewal of levies already in place, if the measures are passed it will not increase the tax burden.
More details are available here.