PORT ANGELES — A $98.25 million bond to rebuild most of Port Angeles High School will go before school district voters early next year.
The School Board approved the bond Thursday night. It will be on the Feb. 10 mail-in ballot.
To pass it must get a 60 percent majority vote.
In addition, there must be a 40 percent voter turnout based on the number of votes cast in the Port Angeles School District in last week’s general election.
The bond would pay to replace all eight classroom buildings and refurbish the auditorium on the 39.7-acre high school campus. The gym complex would not be renovated beyond minor repair work.
The bond would result in a property owner’s estimated property tax rate increasing $1.60 per $1,000 of assessed value over today’s rates for 25 years based on 2014 values.
The owner with a home assessed at $172,000 would pay about $275 more annually in property tax, according to David Trageser of DA Davidson, a financial services firm hired by the school district to advise on bond issues.
“We are not asking for one penny more or one penny less than we need to build a new high school,” said board member Sarah Methner.
Board President Steve Baxter said that lending rates are at a historic low, and the cost of replacing a high school will only increase in the future.
“It’s as low as we’re going to get,” Baxter said.
However, board members were concerned about voter reaction to the large bond.
Board member Patty Happe said that she had “trepidation” over the “large ticket” item being put before the voters.
“This is what it costs,” Happe said.
The last Clallam County school district to build a new high school was the Quillayute Valley School District, which replaced the 300-student Forks High School with a new 86,500 square foot school built in two phases, in 2000 and in 2012 for a total of about $23.5 million.
The district plans to apply for state funds, which board members noted cannot be claimed until the new high school is complete.
By law, any state reimbursement funds must be used to either pay down the bond, or for other construction in the district.
The School Board said many of the district buildings are in need of major repair or replacement.
For the last two years the school district has discussed replacing most of 61-year-old high school. located at 304 E. Park Ave., and refurbishing the auditorium, and considered replacing Hamilton and Franklin elementary schools and Stevens Middle School.
The 61-member Long Range Facilities Task Force determined that replacing all four schools at once would be too costly, and recommended replacing only the high school at this time.
The high school is the only school in the district that is utilized by the entire district, and is heavily used by the community as a public resource, the Task Force said in its report to the School Board.
Under the district’s plan, the existing 51,379-square-foot gym will remain in place and will not receive any renovations beyond some minor repairs.
Replacement or refurbishment of the gym buildings was estimated to cost $16 million to $18 million.
The board and a school district committee have been working on a bond recommendation for nearly two years after the board determined that the increasing cost of maintaining the older schools in the district takes a larger and larger percentage of the district’s operational budget each year as older systems wear out and cannot be repaired.
An estimate of the cost to refurbish the existing school buildings and bring them up to seismic and accessibility is about 85 percent of the cost of replacement, according to district reports.
A preliminary two-story design by McGranahan Architects of Tacoma incorporated the existing auditorium into a C-shaped single building that makes use of natural light, access to outdoor spaces and included expanded spaces for woodworking, metalworking, auto body and auto repair programs.
The McGranahan design has not been selected or approved by the School Board, and changes are expected to be made to the design as additional input is received from teachers, students and the community, district officials have said.
Six of the 10 existing buildings on the campus were built in 1953, two in 1958 and two in 1978.
The replacement plan would not increase or decrease classroom space, but the design would increase the overall square footage from 222,000 to 237,000 due to indoor hallways in place of current outdoor walkways.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
