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Lansing School officials tried to understand why their capital project failed last week when Superintendent Mark Lewis presented the results of an exit poll to the Board of Education.  91% of no voters said the top reason they nixed the project was concern about rising property taxes.  62% said the tax increase the 20.8 million dollar project would have cost was unreasonable, and 45% were not convinced the high school addition was necessary.  "It's self-explanatory," Lewis said.  "The number one reason they voted yes was the aging infrastructure -- renovations. The number one concern from those who voted no was concern about rising property taxes."


While school officials considered the voter turnout of nearly 1,300 good, the main proposition failed by 16 votes in the February 2 vote.  About 80% of the project involved repairs and renovations, while the rest included an addition to the high school that would have added classrooms, plus a new district office.  Lewis said the exit poll showed that the renovation portion of the project would probably have passed if the additions had not been included.  "We could assume that the renovation component of this got a lot of support across the board," Lewis concluded.  "The main issue was the expansion."

Lewis broke down the responses by age group, but noted that the proportions of the respondents may or may not represent the makeup of the overall voters.  Of 1,286 voters 245 took the time to fill out the survey.  Older voters responded more than younger ones, and had more to say about why they voted the way they did.

Board member Tom Keane asked whether the Board should revisit capital improvements in May.  "That's my recommendation," Lewis said.  "Right now we are so focussed on the annual budget that we really couldn't give any attention to this as we should.  And I think that we don't want to overwhelm the public with numbers."

After a failed budget vote last year school officials may have a tough time selling voters on this year's budget.  School Business Administrator Larry Lawrence has warned the board on at least two occasions that while the expenditures he has presented for next year are justified, convincing the public that a 5.61% budget rise is merited will be tough in the current atmosphere of voter resistance to higher property taxes.

"We have to revisit it," Lewis told the Board.  "There are renovations that need to be done to the buildings.  The overcrowding issue is not going to go away.  The question is what is the right sized project?  It was rejected by 16 votes, so there is a lot of support for what we did put up.  But then again there was opposition."

While there are no firm plans to put the project to the voters again, School Board President Bonita Lindberg said that the Board will strategize on how best to approach the schools' capital improvement needs after the '07 - '08 budget is confirmed.

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