Bond issue goes to ballot
By Kevin Kelley
Westlake
Published Jan. 13, 2010

As expected, the Westlake Board of Education decided in a split vote Monday evening to place an $84 million bond issue on the May ballot to fund the renovation and construction of new school buildings.

Saying the district’s 26-month, data-driven study of the district’s facility needs supported the expenditure, board members Carol Winter, Andrea Rocco and Thomas Mays voted in favor of the bond issue.

Tim Sullivan and Nate Cross voted against, saying the economy was still too weak to ask voters to raise their taxes. They also said they favored less expensive alternatives to the $84 million plan.

A 3.4-mill bond issue would finance the construction plan, which would be paid for over 34 years. The measure would cost homeowners $8.68 per month for every $100,000 in home value.

The plan, which was recommended by a 68-member community committee known as the 20/20 Vision Committee, recommended a two-phase plan to address the district’s facility needs.

Under the first phase of the plan, the current Lee Burneson Middle School on Dover Center Road would be renovated and expanded as an intermediate school for approximately 630 fifth and sixth-graders. A new middle school for seventh and eighth-graders would be built on the district’s Dover Center Road property. The existing Dover Elementary School would be torn down. Westlake High School would essentially be rebuilt except for the 2005 Performing Arts Center.

Under the second phase, to be voted on at a later date, two new elementary schools would be constructed at the sites of the current Holly Lane and Bassett Elementary schools. Parkside Intermediate School on Hilliard Road would be renovated as the district’s third elementary school.

Winter, the board president, called the 20/20 Vision recommendation “a well researched and well though out plan.” If the district didn’t take action now, Winter asked, when would it?

“We could talk until we’re blue in the face about different alternatives,” she said.

Rocco warned if the capital issue is not passed, the district will have to take money away from its operational budget — and its educational programs — to pay for expensive maintenance fixes.

“We will not be able to continue the academic excellence when we have to spend the money to fix these buildings,” Rocco said.

Mays, who originally supported a larger, single-phase plan that was estimated to cost $120 million, agreed the district’s history of academic excellence was at stake.

“We’re not going to be the best school district in Ohio if we have to start cutting from our programming,” he said.

Cross, the newly elected board member, seemed to argue the Ohio School Facilities Commission standards used in the district’s 26-month study were too high and led the district down the path of new construction instead of renovations.

Cross, who served on the 20/20 committee since its inception, said other alternatives should still be investigated.

“Perhaps new facilities are not the only answer to the challenge and issue of overcrowding and structural maintenance deficiencies,” Cross said. “Therefore we must further explore and consider the option of renovation and additions to deal with these problems.”

Like Cross, Sullivan cited the poor economy as a major reason for not supporting the bond issue.

“I have said consistently and repeatedly that while our facilities have needs that we must address, I am reluctant to support an extremely large spending plan requiring a very large tax increase during this brutal and painful recession,” Sullivan said.

“I promised our voters fiscal responsibility,” he said. “I do not believe this $84 million proposal is adequately fiscally responsible in terms of timing, scope and cost.”

At the start of the meeting, which attracted more than 100 people, dozens of parents, students and faculty members urged the board to vote unanimously in favor of the bond issue.

Julie Moroney, a junior at Westlake high School, spoke about numerous maintenance problems that teachers and students have to deal with daily.

“There is a prehistoric looking furnace in my pre-calc room that is so loud you can’t hear what the teacher is saying,” she said. “As a class, we voted to turn it off because we’d rather be cold than not be able to hear one another speak.”

Pam Griebel, the district’s director of academic services and the former principal of Holly Lane Elementary School, cautioned against taking an ineffective band-aid approach to the maintenance problem that would cause further harm by diverting money from education.

“I have seen roofs repaired and leak again,” she said.

Joe Kilbane, who unsuccessfully ran for Westlake City Council in 2005, was the only resident to speak against the bond issue at the meeting. It’s the wrong time to raise taxes with the economy in such bad shape, he argued.

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