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LOYAL SCHOOL CHIEF 'DISAPPOINTED' WITH REFERENDUM RESULT
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010 -- 8:40 am
Posted by Riley Hebert-News Director
The Loyal school board went to voters asking for a 4-year, $697,000 revenue cap exemption and voters overwhelmingly said “no.” The final tally was 525-778.
"Personally, I'm disappointed. I thought it would be a lot closer than it ended up," lamented Superintendent Graeme Williams.
The results left Williams scratching his head a bit. Loyal boasts one of the lowest tax rates in the area and has never passed a cap exemption referendum.
"That's the point that I thought for sure (would come across). We are the lowest mill rate around. I really thought the people would understand that and give us some money to operate," he said. "We've been doing the best we can on what we had. Now we have to make some cuts."
Williams thinks the rough economy, mixed with community sentiment that teachers and other school staff are over-compensated led to the resounding defeat.
Now the board faces the grim prospect of enacting cuts.
"It doesn't affect this school year. But, for planning for next year, (the board) is definitely going to have to make some decisions on staffing and programming. That process starts pretty soon," he explains.
Williams said he didn’t want to speak for the board about the prospects of bringing another referendum to voters in spring.
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