Back to the Bond Information
Notes and audio provided by Karina Lande who attended this meeting.
Parent. Corbett Community Member. Concerned Citizen.
Audio
Audio Notes:
* Board Chair, Charlie O’Neil. First speaker.
* See below notes in blue to see where each board member made their comments for good quality information.
GO BOND SPECIAL BOARD MEETING
THE BOARD IS DIVIDED, but passed the placement of GO Bond for $15 Million, to be on the November ballot, by a vote of 5 to 2
In favor;
Charlie O’neil
Bob Buttke
David Gorman
Mark Hyzer
Todd Mickelson
Opposed;
Victoria Purvine
Annette Calcagno
Board Member Statements
Mark Hyzer:
* At minute 2:38 – Mark recommends the $15 million bond. Then explains his support.
I think it’s the duty of the board to identify the needs of the district and put it to voters to decide. I think the board and the facilities committee has done a good job of identifying the needs and there’s a lot of data showing support for a building project at this time and that’s the primary reasons I am going to vote for this.
Annette Calcagno – No Vote
* At minute 4:16 – Annette explains she can support a bond but not this bond amount.
I am not supporting the amount we are putting on this bond. I feel we’re not being detailed enough about exactly what we’re going to use the money for & I think that we are over reaching more of our wants verses our needs. I was more into supporting something in the $8 to $10 million range. I think we’re doing more than we need. I think we do need to upgrade the middle school, I don’t think that we need to go as elaborate as has been planned out I don’t like the scare tactics that have been used to support it. I can support something but not this.
Todd Mickalson:
At minute 5:22 minutes – Todd believes in this bond. He believes the east winds will take the building down etc.
“It’s lower interest rates than we’ve ever had. the big thing for me is there is a need for the middle school to be replaced. I’m worried about the east wind taking it down. I’m going to support it & we’re doing the best we can to keep things within certain limitations. There are other things that need to be addressed throughout the campus as well. Why not do it now with such good interest rates?
Victoria Purvine – No Vote
At minute 7:56 minutes – Victoria believes we need to take care of the middle school and seismic upgrades. She also believes that we are talking about replacing a building of 8 classrooms in it and building a new high school with 16 classrooms and adding another 4 classrooms and are using this as an opportunity to grow the district…
David Gorman
At minute 8:31 minutes – David believes this bond is supporting the chance to give the residents of Corbett the decision of voting on the amount.
I’d like to point out as a board we’re not really voting to spend $15 million dollars, we’re voting to put this measure on the ballot so the people of Corbett can vote on whether to spend that $15 million dollars. From the studies we’ve done it does appear that we need most everything that will be covered by that bond. Once again I am voting for it because I want to give the residents of Corbett the opportunity to make that decision for themselves.
Charlie O’Neil
At minute 9:12 minutes – Charlie – the best way to replace the middle school, without modulars, is to do the expansion of the existing gym, turning the weight room into classrooms, doing the basement and having extra classrooms there and then we can move kids from that building to that building… then when new building is finished we can move them back into there…plus do a stage in the expanded back gym, people know we need another big gym. We need more quality gym space. If we didn’t want to expand the old gym… we wouldn’t have a place to put the kids … there are a few more classrooms yes, everyone knows say how crowded we are now… Haven’t heard anybody saying we want to expand… economically we are at a sweet spot…no guarantees in the future…
Reasons I am supporting the bond are to start with, the middle school needs to be replaced. Another factor in building a new school and what a lot of people don’t understand is the kids coming into our district bring state money into our programs not necessarily for the buildings but they generate money so that we can run an expanded program and that’s another reason we need more classrooms. It’s a good idea to build more than we actually need right now. Theres a lot of reasons to vote for this, we’re not being extravagant we’re getting a lot done for $15 million when you compare what other people have spent on building buildings.
Bob Buttke
At minute 14:20 minutes. Aren’t we voting on giving the people the opportunity to vote on a bond up to $15 million not to exceed $15 million. We haven’t agreed to where we’re going to place the building, what we’re going to tear down, whether we’re going to move the bus barn across the road or keep it here, or whether it’s going to take $12 mil or $15 mil right?
Charlie – ” yes.”
Bob – ok so with that I’m in favor of giving everybody the opportunity to vote on this. I think there’s some discussions that need to happen before we actually put it down on paper if the bond passes. What I’m getting at is there will be more discussions on all kinds of stuff, we’re voting on the bond tonight and the rest will be after the bond passes.
15:34 – Randy – yah…generally speaking…we’ll go out for a bid for an architect… he’ll come back with which crazy design… present to board… ya know…won’t be extravagant…50 classrooms each at 100 sf… or 2 classrooms with 7000 sf or anything in between… Tori mentioned one plan… the newest version has 11 classrooms in the 20 sf bldg…. and 5 classrooms in the other portion… it won’t look like what is drawn now…
Public Comments
Janet Rudell
I was on the facilities committee and attended every meeting. One of my concerns are in the purchase of the Servpro building thats been added in. My concern is as Todd said regarding the middle school “the building will fail, it’s just a matter of when.” that building is nearly as old as the middle school I don’t think we need it because the committee voted on additional parking of 100+ spaces & also accommodated moving the bus barn and addressed administrative office space in our plan. I don’t think this district needs to purchase a property that is nearly as old as the middle school, isn’t ADA compliant and I don’t think we need it. It’s $600,000 we don’t need to spend.
…
I think the language in the bond as its worded now is kind of vague on what we’re doing, the survey didn’t support some of what your going out for so you changed the content to make it a little more vague so you can do more of what you want to without the voters really knowing.
…
I think we need to develop trust with the community and be up front and clear with what your doing and what your spending. I beg the board to be upfront, clear, and to clarify any content that is misleading so we develop & maintain the trust of the community.
Neve Scott
I’ve been out here for 54 years, I’ve done every single thing at this school except teach a class. I’m telling you we’ve got to take that old building down. It is unsafe and it’s a money hole. We are in a unique situation where we can build the things we need and take care of the problems and not raise taxes. I say take it.
After vote
Charlie O’neil
I personally am going to write a check to the campaign for passing the bond for $100 I’d like to invite other board members to give that, or what you can, to pass this.
* A political action committee has been formed to campaign for the passing of the bond.
Things to keep in mind:
No one is opposing the replacement of the middle school or the safety and seismic upgrades needed.
There are no clear plans! ( As stated by board members above they haven’t decided what they will or won’t do yet, they want the money first and than plan to figure it out after. )
- Shouldn’t the community have a clear idea of what this money will go for?
- How big will the school actually be?
- What extras will you do and what ones are you not doing?
- Where’s the contractor bids for real costs?
- Where’s the other design renderings we were promised?
…
In essence they want a $15 million dollar blank check after which they will decide what will or won’t be done without any required input of the community whatsoever!
Yes the number of classrooms will increase substantially, almost double. I’ll let you form your own opinions on the likelihood of this leading to even more out of area kids or the creation of a second charter school for STEM. How much growth and expansion do Corbett residents want?
The community survey strongly supported upgrades at an $8 million dollar price point NOT a $15 million dollar price point. Also these tax amounts the district is quoting you can not be guaranteed! Interest rates fluctuate and will do so many times over a 20 year timespan. The only thing guaranteed is the dollar amount of the loan.
THIS IS NOT AN ALL OR NOTHING VOTE! Randy Trani has said himself if it fails in November they will re-evaluate and go again for the May election.
