Little Rock School District voters will decide today whether to extend the levy of 12.4 debt-service mills by 14 years as a way to finance school construction and campus improvements in the state's largest public school system.
Polling sites will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
The proposed tax extension, if approved, would not raise the annual taxes paid by property owners, but they would pay the same yearly tax rate for longer.
District leaders have said they would issue $202 million in bonds based on the extended mills to pay off existing building debt at a lower interest rate and also generate $160 million for a new high school in southwest Little Rock and upgrades at all other district campuses.
Reader poll
How will you vote on the Little Rock School District levy extension in today's election?
- For
- Against
37 total votes.
Organized campaigns for and against the proposed tax extension spent the days before the election advocating their positions in a variety of ways.
One side -- the Committee to Rebuild Our Schools Now campaign -- sees the tax plan as a financially painless way to start on needed building improvements throughout the 24,000-student district. The Committee to Rebuild Our Schools Now raised $30,499 through May 2 for its campaign.
The other camp -- Citizens Against Taxation Without Representation -- sees the plan as a risky, costly increase in the district's long-term bond indebtedness at a time when the district is under state direction without a locally elected, accountable school board. Citizens Against Taxation Without Representation raised $3,176 through April 30.
Bryan Poe, director of elections in Pulaski County, said Monday that he expects a turnout of 10 percent to 15 percent of the approximately 108,000 registered voters in the Little Rock district to participate in the special election on extending the levy from 2033 -- when the 12.4 mills of the district's overall 46.4-mill tax rate are now due to expire -- to 2047.
"It's really hard [to tell] with special elections," he said. "It's May, and people aren't looking to vote in May of an off [general election] year, generally -- although this has gotten a lot of media. So I expect the turnout to be better than it would be if it hadn't gotten the attention."
Early voting at five sites generated a total of 2,018 votes by the end of Monday. Poe called that "really good for an election of this size."
Voters will be asked to show identification at the polls today but will not be kept from voting if they decline to produce that identification, Poe said, adding that the state's new law requiring voter identification does not go into effect until later this year.
Poe, the Pulaski County Election Commission and the Pulaski County clerk's office are working to resolve questions that developed during the early-voting period about voter eligibility along the school district's western boundary.
Boundary lines between the Little Rock district and the Pulaski County Special School District were set in the 1980s and, in the case of Chambery Drive in the St. Charles neighborhood, for example, the boundary line went through undeveloped land, Poe said. Since then, homes have been built, and there are cases where a house might be in one school district while other parts of the property are in another district.
There are 65 registered voters on Chambery, and there may be voters with similar situations on other streets, Poe said. Affected residents will be allowed to vote using provisional ballots. The Pulaski County Election Commission, at meetings Thursday and May 18, will decide on a case-by-case basis whether to include the provisional ballot votes as part of the certified vote tally for the election, Poe said.
In the long term, county officials will work to clarify the Little Rock and Pulaski County Special district boundaries, he said.
Little Rock district Superintendent Mike Poore proposed earlier this year, supported by Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key, that the state-controlled district seek the tax extension as a way to help finance a $90 million high school in southwest Little Rock to replace McClellan High and J.A. Fair high schools.
About $55 million from bond issues based on the tax extension would be combined with savings and the district's last state desegregation aid payment of $37.3 million to pay for the building. The new high school for 2,250 students is planned for undeveloped land between Mabelvale Pike and Mann Road, behind Home Depot and Wal-Mart stores.
Bond money would also be used to convert the existing McClellan campus into a middle or a middle/elementary school, and to build a new physical education complex at Mabelvale Middle School. Windows, lights, roofs, floors, and heating and air conditioning systems would be upgraded at other campuses in the district with the bond money.
The 12.4 debt-service mills at issue raise $43.1 million a year, of which $13.5 million is earmarked this year for bond debt. The surplus of almost $30 million a year is used to meet other district operating costs, including maintenance, equipment, salaries and utilities.
If the proposed tax extension is approved by voters, allowing the refinancing of existing bonds and the issuing of new bonds, the district's debt service -- principal plus interest -- would increase to an estimated $21.4 million each year between 2019 and 2041. The debt payment would drop to about $3.7 million a year between 2042 and 2047.
The proposed tax extension comes at a time when the Little Rock district not only remains under state control without an elected school board for having three academically distressed schools, but also at a time when it's planning to close three schools next year and repurpose a fourth as a way to save money.
The proposal also comes while the district continues to see the expansion of state-approved, independently operated charter schools in the area. Charter schools and traditional schools compete for students and state funding.
The Citizens Against Taxation Without Representation campaign includes the members of the Save Our Schools organization that is fighting the closure of the neighborhood schools.
The Citizens Against Taxation group held a rally Monday to object to tactics used by the supporters of the tax plan. Those complaints included the use of Police Chief Kenton Buckner's image and sentiments on their campaign material and the citing by name of tax extension opponent and former School Board member Jim Ross in telephone calls to voters.
Rhianna Taylor, treasurer for the Committee to Rebuild Our Schools Now, said Monday that the police chief gave permission to cite his support for the tax extension and that the photo of him was a public photo that was found online.
Vincent Tolliver, a speaker at Monday's rally, said the opponents of the tax extension are not opposed to school construction or to students or teachers but that they are specifically opposed to expansion of charter schools that have "gone wildly unchecked ... because it is not good for the Little Rock School District. "
Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, who is a leader of the opposition to the tax extension, said at the rally Monday that the district does need to build a new high school and make other improvements but that the work should be done as part of a long-term plan and not as a stopgap measure "that mortgages our future."
"We don't want to put this district into a position from which it can't recover," Elliott said, adding later that she resented the portrayal of those opposed to the tax extension as being petulant children angry over the state takeover of the system.
Some of the contributors to the Committee to Rebuild Our Schools Now and the amounts they contributed included Gary Smith, chairman of the committee, $1,000; businessman and former School Board member John Riggs, $2,500; retired Central Arkansas Library System Director Bobby Roberts, $1,000; businessman Mike Coulson, $5,000; and Poore, $1,000. Some of the others are Arkansas Blue Cross & Blue Shield, $5,000; Delta Dental, $2,500; businessman Haskell Dickenson, $4,000; Realtors Association, $5,000; consultant Robert McLarty, $1,000; and consultant Jordan Johnson, $1,000. Richard Nagel, Enis Thomas, architectural firm Witsell Evans and Rasco, Herbert Rule, Rett Tucker and Jimmy Moses contributed smaller amounts.
Expenditures included $8,941 for postage and $2,250 for Facebook advertising.
Itemized contributions to Citizens Against Taxation Without Representation ranged from $50 to $500, with former Pulaski County Circuit Judge Marion Humphrey giving the largest single donation of $500.
A Section on 05/09/2017
