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TOMBSTONE — In a replay of May’s special election to implement a maintenance and operations budget increase for the public schools, voters in the Tombstone district defeated the referendum by a margin of 1,217 to 805.
The decision will prevent an infusion of approximately $470,000 to the schools’ coffers that would have begun with the next school year and continued for an additional six years. In the final two years of an override, funds were to be reduced by one-third.
“I think the board and the staff did a good job of getting the information out,” said Benjamin Barber, the newest member of the district’s governing board. “The district does not have a lot of high-income people. I think they place a value on education, but they also value surviving on a fixed income.”
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He speculated whether the Cochise College bond question, which was also defeated Tuesday night, also might have had an impact on voters.
Less forgiving was Joerg Wallace, who was appointed to the board to fill a vacancy and will now begin his first, full four-year term.
“We have a lot of hard decisions to make,” he said, “and there’s going to be a lot of upset people after we make those decisions. I guess people in the district don’t care about their kids. If they don’t want to get out and support the district or kids, the decisions still have to be made.”
The Tombstone Unified School District operates two K-8 elementary schools, Huachuca City School and Walter J. Meyer School, as well as Tombstone High School.
Its most recent financial woes are the result of a steadily declining enrollment — from a high this century of 1,024 in 2001 to a low of 856 last year. The Arizona Department of Education funds districts through a formula called “Average Daily Membership,” or ADM, which is predicated on the number of students in attendance on the 100th day of the school year.
The amount requested by the governing board was the legal limit — a 10 percent increase over its alternative budget of $4.86 million, which would have permitted a budget of $5.33 million beginning with the 2007-2008 school year — the soonest the funds would have been available.
A school district’s maintenance and operations budget reflects the largest chunk of its expenditures, covering salaries, benefits, and day-to-day costs of running the school facilities. The majority of school districts in Arizona function with overrides in place.
The proposed override would have instituted a secondary property tax, costing the taxpayer approximately $74 a year for a home with the district’s average assessed value of $70,930. Among neighboring districts, only Willcox schools have a lower total tax rate than Tombstone.
After the returns were in, Superintendent Ron Hennings answered his phone with a three-word announcement: “Not very happy.”
Hennings and the governing board meet at 6 p.m. today at Tombstone High School to discuss the future.
“We have to go back to the drawing board and see what we have to do for next year’s budget,” he said. “One thing that has to happen is to increase our teachers’ compensation to keep the best of them. We have to be competitive. Even if we have to reduce more teaching positions.”
When last spring’s override failed, the district looked for a variety of ways to tighten its belt, including reduced faculty, larger teacher-to-student ratios, and reduced hours at Huachuca City and Walter J. Meyer schools.
It appears the belt must be tightened again.
REPORTER Cindy Skalsky can be reached at 515-4611.
Joe Hicks wrote on Oct 8, 2007 2:22 PM: