Voters in a special election Tuesday rejected the Little Rock School District's proposal to extend the levy of 12.4 debt-service mills by 14 years to raise $160 million for a new high school and improvements at all other district campuses.
The complete but unofficial results were:
Against 7,167
For 3,938
Nearly 65 percent of those voting opposed the tax plan and 35 percent favored it. Just over 10 percent of the 110,676 registered voters in the school district participated in the election. The Pulaski County Election Commission will meet at 4 p.m. Thursday to evaluate provisional ballots and again at 5 p.m. May 18 to certify the vote totals.
Citizens Against Taxation Without Representation, a group that opposed extending the 12.4 mills from 2033 to 2047, focused on the district's operating under state control and without an elected school board that could be held responsible for how the money would be spent.
"Well, in one sense, I'm glad that we defeated this," said Jim Ross, who lost his school board seat in the state takeover. "It needed to be defeated. But I'm also saddened that the state and the district put us in this place that we had to divide the city. The city now is probably more divided than it was 30 days ago, so what we want to come out of this is we hope that [Superintendent] Mike Poore, who's a good man, will meet with us, and we can have a constructive, creative conversation about the future of our district."
The opposition group's watch party at Grady's Pizza and Subs on 12th Street brought out more than 40 people, including former Judge Marion Humphrey, attorney and state Rep. John Walker, state Sen. Joyce Elliott and members of the Save Our Schools Campaign that opposes plans to close three schools and re-purpose another to save money next school year.
Many in the group talked about the work that now needs to be done.
"There's no joy tonight by me. I'm not feeling that. I'm feeling like our city is divided, and we need to heal," said former Superintendent Baker Kurrus who opposed the tax plan. "We need some healing, and we need some soul-searching, and we need to work together. We need to take the enthusiasm from all these groups and focus it and try to make our city better."
It all comes down to the question of how the city can educate all children, he said.
"And it's not going to be an easy thing especially when we continue to have so many new entrants into this marketplace, but if the Little Rock School District is going to make its plans, it needs to have some sort of framework within which to make those plans," he said.
Elliott also said she was pleased with the result, but not with the rift the election has caused.
"I'm not cheerleading. I'm not doing high-fives or anything like that because I know we have so much more work to do," she said. "I think the major message I'd like people to take from this vote is we have gotten a reprieve from making a mistake."
The vote against the millage provides an opportunity for everyone to work together to come up with a plan for the district, she said.
"We're talking immediacy here," she said. "Do some sit-downs and start thinking about, for example, what can the private sector do for instance to contribute to the fund to do the renovations that we need to do right now. We had so little support for our schools from some of the very people who were for the millage and not really contributing in a meaningful way to the sustainability of the school district. That's where I think we ought to start."
The citizens committee said in a statement that it believes first-rate facilities are an important part of a great school district.
"But even more so, we believe the facilities our students deserve require more than was offered by the proposed short-term renovations."
The group called for the Arkansas Board of Education to reinstate local control of the district that was taken over by the state in 2015 because six of the district's schools were labeled as being academically distressed.
The plan to extend the 12.4 mills would not have increased annual tax bills but would have required property owners to pay the same annual rate for more years. Poore, with the approval of Arkansas Education Commissioner Johnny Key, proposed to issue about $202 million in bonds to pay off existing debt at a lower interest rate and generate $160 million to go toward the construction of a high school in southwest Little Rock and for improvements at all other campuses.
Poore said Tuesday at an election watch party for millage supporters at the Taco & Tamale restaurant that the defeat of the millage extension will delay the construction of the $90 million high school planned for 2,250 students on Mabelvale Pike. The school is meant to replace McClellan and J.A. Fair high schools.
"It's going to push it back a little bit," Poore said. "To make those numbers work, you just can't have it happen all of a sudden. It probably pushes it back at least a year. I still don't know if that is totally the direction we want to go. There are so many needs that impact learning environments. I think we need to take our time and evaluate some things. Opening the high school in 2019, that falls off the radar in my opinion."
Poore was appointed last year to be the district's superintendent by Key. He told the crowd of about 30 that he is proud to be the superintendent of the school district where much good is happening, and is convinced the district will be a better one "tomorrow and next year."
"If I have a sadness, I presented a package that helped our kids and that didn't happen. I don't think we helped our kids. I know that there is a lot more than facilities that make a difference for kids. It's about what we do as a group of people," he said.
The tax proposal divided some of the city's most prominent business, education, and government leaders into different camps and even pulled in Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who spoke in support for the passage of the measure.
The defeat of the plan defied the financial odds. Citizens Against Taxation Without Representation had only about $3,000 to spend compared with more than $30,000 raised by the Committee to Rebuild Our Schools Now.
Gary Smith, chairman of the Committee to Rebuild Our Schools acknowledged the election results after seeing that the tax plan was defeated in a southwest Little Rock precinct closest to where the new school would be built.
The tax plan was defeated in most precincts across the city.
At the Arkansas Art Center, for example, 46 votes favored the tax plan and 112 were against.
At Pulaski Academy on Hinson Road, the vote was 216 for and 261 against. At St. James United Methodist Church on Pleasant Valley Drive, there were 109 for the tax and 179 against. At First Missionary Baptist Church on Mabelvale West, the vote was 28 for and 60 against. At Pulaski Heights Methodist Church on Woodlawn Drive, the vote was 86 for and 167 against.
"There was passionate opposition," Smith said. "They threw out enough issues that caused voters to be concerned. The losers are the children and all those associated with the school district and the city. The winners are going to be the surrounding schools and charter schools."
Smith said those who favored the tax plan tried at the front end of the campaign to build a coalition for the tax plan but there was no appetite from the opposition group leaders to do that.
"We decided to go anyway because we didn't want the delay," he said. "The delay could mean as much as four years before any of this is done and we didn't think the district could afford to wait four years, particularly with interest rates and construction costs."
Support for the tax plan had to overcome the state takeover, opposition to school closures and fear of charters, Smith said. He also said that Kurrus' opposition to the tax plan hurt the effort to win voter approval of the tax extension.
"You had a long list to overcome, " he said, "but in the end it was the right thing to do."
In addition to helping pay for a new high school, money from the bond issues financed by the extended 12.4 mills would be used to construct a new classroom building on the McClellan High campus at a projected cost of $40 million and a gymnasium complex at Mabelvale Middle School at a cost of about $5.8 million. Other money was earmarked for new windows and roofs, upgrades to athletic fields, and heating and air conditioning improvements throughout the district.
Poore has said that the planned capital projects were not new but reflected the work and ideas of past school boards, superintendents and consultants. A 2014 study of the district's facilities by an Indiana consultant concluded the needs top $300 million.
The 12.4 debt-service mills raises $43.1 million a year, of which $13.5 million is earmarked this year for bond debt. The yearly surplus of almost $30 million is used to meet other district operating costs, including maintenance, equipment, salaries and utilities. Opponents of the tax plan argued that the surplus funds could be used for the capital projects.
Had the millage extension been approved and bonds issued, the district's debt service -- principal plus interest -- would have increased to an estimated $21.4 million in each year between 2019 and 2041. The debt payment would drop to about $3.7 million a year between 2042 and 2047.
Tuesday's special election was the first tax change of any kind proposed in the Little Rock district since May 9, 2000.
Metro on 05/10/2017
