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EMMETSBURG, Iowa (Iowa Media Wire) — For the second year in a row, voters in the Emmetsburg School District are being asked to pass a bond measure to help replace the aging elementary school. The West Elementary School in Emmetsburg was built in the 1950s.
Over the years, there have been improvements made and additions to the original structure, the last being in 2013, but despite the improvements and additions, school officials said the building has aged out of being a viable structure for learning.
“We have a facility sitting here that’s over 75 years old,” said Superintendent at Emmetsburg Community School District Cory Jenness. “In looking at the costs to kind of re-do, fix what we need to fix here, the cost just became to a point where it was just financially not responsible for the district and the taxpayers to use that money.”
The school houses pre-school through 4th grade. Some of the issues in the existing building include outdated heating and air-conditioning units, damaged floors, insufficient storage space, and just not enough space for all the students.
“These are classrooms and facilities for our littlest kids,” said Custodian at West Elementary School, Jim Carpenter. “When I walk down the hallway and I look at all the issues we have, how outdated the building is, I kind of look around and think, gosh, we can do better than this.”
Last year, the measure got 51% of the votes, but a super-majority of 60% is needed for the vote to pass.
“So to get us over that margin, we redefined our plan,” Carpenter said. “We lowered the tax asking that we were going from. Last year, we were asking $2.54. This year we have that all the way down to a $1.59.”
What that means is that taxes would go up, but not as much as last year. The owner of a home valued at $100,000 would pay an additional $68-per-year in property taxes. The bond also went down from just over $29 million to just over $25 million.
“Last year, we looked at doing everything on a geo bond, so we were planning the $29 million just on one bond,” said Superintendent Jenness. “This year, what we’ve done is a combination. We’ve lowered the geo bond down to $25.6 million, but then we’re also borrowing against our saved funds.”
If passed, the school would be built on the north side of Emmetsburg and open in time for the 2029 school year.
While most of the old buildings would be torn down, the newer portion built would be saved and re-purposed.
“The 1950 addition would be demo-ed,” Superintendent Jenness said. “We’d be keeping everything here from 2013 that they put on a new gym, new kitchen, new lunchroom, and offices and that would still be utlized and mainatained and owned by the school district and the spencer ymca, we currently have a lease with them that they are currenlty providing before and after school childcare that is a need in our community.”
^ unsure watch back ^
If you would like more information on the bond measure, the school district is holding a series of town halls. The first one was on October 15, and the next one will be on October 26.