Voters approve local option for schools

Sisters area voters renewed their school district's "local option" levy in the November 2 election. The current levy expires at the end of the 2004-05 school year. The new one will last for another four years.

"I think it's a great tribute to the committee that worked so hard to make it happen," said a delighted Ted Thonstad, superintendent of Sisters schools. "It's a tribute to the community and how much (the people here) value education and children."

His thoughts echoed those of Board Chairman Glen Lasken when the first election-night returns showed a favorable margin: "I think the citizens of Sisters have made a statement that they value the education of their children."

Voters actually gave the new levy a greater margin of support than they did the original levy in the general election of 2000. The renewal passed 56 percent "Yes" to 41 percent "No" with 4,448 total votes cast on the measure. The 2000 measure passed 53 percent "Yes" to 45 percent "No," with 3,675 votes cast.

Seven school districts around the state asked voters to start or renew local option levies in this election. Only four succeeded, including Sisters (see story, page 38).

A local option levy produces local property tax revenue that a district gets to keep for its own use rather than having it tossed into a statewide pot for distribution under a complicated formula intended to equalize school support throughout the state.

This year, the Sisters levy is bringing in $798,000, 9.1 percent of the district's general operating funds. Over the next four years, the yield from the renewed levy will increase by more than $30,000 per year, reaching an estimated $933,547 in the last of the four years, 2008-09.

The growing revenue will come from the district's rising assessed property value, not the tax rate. The school board purposely kept the tax rate the same as it has been for the past four years, 75 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, even though a change in the state law authorized it to go up to 85 cents.

Asked what would have happened if the levy had failed, the superintendent said there would have been no way to avoid cutting staff because 85 percent of the district's costs go for personnel. And that would mean cutting programs.

"So where can you cut programs? You know you gotta offer the core subjects. So then you start looking at electives, I think the things that round out an education and make this worth doing. So that's where the cuts would have had to come."

There probably would have been one more try at a renewal. The school board had already made it clear that if this levy failed it probably would make another attempt in some form in the March election, which would have provided money in time for the 2005-06 school year. But no one wanted to do that.

Thonstad said this was "probably the 12th or 13th time I've been through one of these." He was referring to school money measure of all types and counting his experience as a Redmond School Board member before he became an administrator.

For the three years before he came to Sisters in August he was superintendent of tiny Condon School District, where he managed to pass both a construction bond measure and a local option levy.

But he was quick to give others credit for the most recent success.

"My expectation has been that if you get a good group of people together and put together a good plan and follow it, you tell people what is going on and why you need the money...people will generally support it. But you've got to work at it," he said.

He noted that the basic planning committee for the Sisters levy included, besides himself, Mike Gould, chairman of the citizens steering committee, School Board Chairman Glen Lasken and Vice Chairman Tom Coffield. More than 50 volunteers went door-to-door, made phone calls and did other work.

The superintendent pointed to the board chair as the key strategist: "Glen put together a 12-week plan and we pretty much executed that, with a lot of help from a lot of other people. I think Glen put together a campaign plan that we could probably market."