Voters in the new Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District special election Tuesday approved a 7.6-mill property tax increase to help finance a new high school, a new elementary school and four expanded elementary campuses.
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With all precincts reporting, the unofficial results on the tax increase were:
FOR 2,094
AGAINST 1,702
The Pulaski County Election Commission will meet at 5 p.m. Feb. 18 to certify the results.
"The city of Jacksonville is ready and willing to do what it takes to take care of our children," School Board President Daniel Gray said about the vote outcome. "We are ready to move our economy forward and we are ready to make Jacksonville a destination of choice to live in again and to educate our children here."
The passage of the tax increase is the latest milestone in the history of a school district that was established in late 2014 after an election in which nearly 95 percent of participating voters in the proposed district favored detaching from the Pulaski County Special School District.
The margin of victory wasn't as great Tuesday. A total of 55.16 percent of the 3,796 participating voters supported the tax increase while 44.84 percent opposed it.
The tax won at all but two of nine polling places, losing by 29 votes at McArthur Assembly of God Church and by 250 votes -- 323 to 73 -- at Bayou Meto Baptist Church. The tax had its largest margin of victory in the early-voting numbers, winning 819 to 420 in the days before election day.
A total of 20.63 percent of the 18,407 registered voters in the district participated in the election, a percentage that Bryan Poe, director of elections in Pulaski County, called "amazing" for a special election.
Samantha Williams-Davis was one of the last voters Tuesday night at the Jacksonville Community Center.
"I did vote for it," Williams-Davis said of the measure that will cost her family about $300 in new taxes a year for the next 25 years.
"I was originally thinking of voting against it because at this point there is no way of telling how the new district administration will manage the funds. So I was a little gun shy," she said, "but we made a decision as a family to try to have a little faith in the school district and try to increase opportunities for children."
Tony Wood, superintendent of the new district, said he was "truly not surprised" by the passage of the new tax, which will show up on tax bills in 2017.
"The way this community pulls together and the commitment of effort reflected in the original vote to separate, I expected that support to continue in regard to this millage," Wood said.
The Jacksonville/North Pulaski district was created after decades of work by Jacksonville leaders in the Arkansas Legislature and in federal court to pave the way for the new system. Even now, the Jacksonville district remains under the direction of the Pulaski County Special district until July 1, when the new system of about 4,000 students will begin operating on its own.
The new district is obligated to meet the same school desegregation requirements as the Pulaski County Special district, including requirements for improved, equitable school campuses.
Tuesday's vote raises the school property tax rate from 40.7 mills -- the rate inherited from the Pulaski County Special district -- to 48.3 mills.
The tax increase will cost the owner of a $50,000 home an additional $76 a year. The owner of a $100,000 property will pay an additional $152 a year, and the owner of a $200,000 home will pay an additional $304 annually.
The money generated by the newly approved 7.6 mills increase will be combined with the district's existing 14.8 debt service mills to pay the debt over 25 years on a $46 million bond issue. The district also will seek state Partnership Program school building money and funding from the U.S. Department of Defense to help offset the cost of the elementary school, which will serve students from Little Rock Air Force Base.
The $80 million building plan calls for the construction of a $60 million high school for the district on the site of the now vacant Jacksonville Middle School and a new elementary school to replace both Tolleson and Arnold Drive elementaries.
Each of the four remaining elementaries -- Bayou Meto, Pinewood, Murrell Taylor and Warren Dupree -- will be expanded to include large multipurpose rooms.
The current North Pulaski High will become home to the district's middle school starting in August.
Education Corps of Jacksonville/North Pulaski headed the Forward February 9 campaign in support of the tax increase.
About 100 people -- including school board members, Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher, city aldermen, the district's first Superintendent Bobby Lester, architects for the building project and other civic leaders -- cheered the results Tuesday at an election watch party at the Jacksonville Police Department.
"We are excited and relieved it is over with," Gray said. "Our community has shown that it is ready to address our facility needs that are long overdue to be addressed. I'm very thankful to everybody who was involved."
He said the campaign for Tuesday's vote was more difficult than the campaign to form a new district.
"When you start asking people to dig into their pocketbooks, it's more challenging," he said.
There was no organized campaign against the tax although individuals picketed against the increase at different locations in the city last week. Additionally, concerns about the tax proposal were posted on social media websites.
The objections centered on the cost of the increase, its effect on low-income families and the potential to force up the price of rent in leased homes and apartments.
The new Jacksonville district must meet the same requirement of providing "clean, safe, attractive and equal" schools that the Pulaski County Special district is obligated to meet under its Plan 2000 desegregation plan. Both districts are being monitored for compliance by U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., the presiding judge in the long-running Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit.
Marshall earlier this year approved the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district building plan as a means of equalizing the condition of the Jacksonville schools with newer schools elsewhere in the Pulaski County Special district.
But the judge at the same time also directed the new district to submit to him by the end of this calendar year its plans for replacing Bayou Meto, Pinewood, Taylor and Dupree elementaries.
The district must supplement its building plan by Dec. 31 with the "when-and-how specifics about replacing the schools so that all the new district's elementary schools are equal," he said.
The newly approved 7.6 mills is the first school tax increase approved in Pulaski County since February 2012, when North Little Rock School District voters approved a 7.4 mill increase to help finance a $265 million capital construction project. The North Little Rock tax rate is 48.3 mills.
Before the North Little Rock increase, the last school property tax increase approved in Pulaski County was in Little Rock School District in 2000. The Little Rock district's tax rate is 46.4 mills.
The Pulaski County Special School District's 40.7 mill tax rate has been the same since 1992.
In May 2015, the Pulaski County Special district -- excluding the territory that is designated as the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district -- asked voters for a 5.6-mill tax increase to finance a $221 million building and renovation program to modernize buildings that averaged 44 years old and to accelerate the district's removal from federal court supervision. That proposal was rejected.
A Section on 02/10/2016