SEQUIM — Student voices were among those heard ahead of the City Council’s unanimous decision to support the Sequim School District’s proposed $54 million construction bond.
“We owe supporting the bond to our students,” Emma Eekhoff, Sequim High School senior and senior editor of the high school’s newspaper, The Growl, told the City Council on Monday night.
“We deserve better schools, and we deserve nicer conditions.”
Fellow student and high school class president, Megan O’Mera, who said she has lived in Sequim her entire life, described the district’s conditions as “despicable.”
“One of the biggest issues that I think needs to be addressed and will be addressed by this bond is the district kitchen,” she said.
“It services every single student in the district, and for some kids, school breakfast and lunch are the only meals they see during the week.”
Improvements
The school improvements that would be funded by the bond measure, which will be before voters on the Feb. 9 special election ballot, mirrors those that would have been funded by a November 2015 bond proposal.
That proposal — the third construction bond measure that failed — was approved by 59.57 percent of the vote, short of the required 60 percent supermajority.
Building a new elementary school, adding more classrooms at Greywolf Elementary and the high school, modernizing the district base kitchen, renovating the 1979 addition of Sequim Community School and demolishing the 1948 portion are among the projects earmarked.
Although February’s bond proposal addresses the same projects as November’s, the price has increased by $5 million because of rising construction costs, according to Brian Lewis, Sequim School District business manager, who added that prevailing wages for Clallam County are the same as for King County.
Different proposal
Deputy Mayor Ted Miller said he’d been “somewhat ambivalent” in his support of past school bond proposals but believes this proposal is “totally different.”
“On the last bond proposal, the city of Sequim overwhelmingly supported it,” he said.
“We aren’t elected by the voters to tell them that they should increase their real estate taxes — that’s a decision they should make for themselves — but in this case, it’s totally different.
“The voters have already spoken, and they’ve said they like this idea, and all we have is an inflation adjustment,” Miller said.
If approved in February, the cost to repay the 20-year bonds is 67 cents per $1,000 assessed valuation. Combined with the educational programs and operations levy, the total local school district’s tax rate in 2017 would be $2.16 per $1,000 assessed valuation.
Ballots for the Feb. 9 special election will be mailed Wednesday, Jan. 20.
Council members also set a public hearing for Monday, Jan. 25, on a proposed amendment to the utility code.
The change would clarify the consequences of a utility disconnection and document the potential financial consequences to a future buyer or tenant, according to the report prepared by City Attorney Craig Ritchie.
________
Alana Linderoth is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach her at alinderoth@sequimgazette.com.
