IRSD referendum all set for Tuesday

By Jonathan Starkey
Staff Reporter

Patrick Miller — the director of business and finance for the Indian River School District — has noticed something worrisome in the last couple of weeks. In the final push toward the district’s Tuesday, March 28 referendum, the school board and district employees have held more than a dozen meetings to peak public interest. The problem is, there doesn’t seem to be any public interest, he said.

Sometimes no one shows up to the meetings. The most public participation the district has received was when about 10 people attended one of its meetings about two weeks ago. At the most recent meeting, which was held on March 16 at Sussex Central High School and meant to educate the public on issues surrounding the referendum, only three people attended. One was a school district employee, another was a running for a school board seat in the May election and the third was a retired district principal.

“Those people still had a vested interest,” Miller said. “They weren’t people from the general public. It’s disheartening to the fact that people aren’t interested in their schools.”

Miller hopes that he will see more interest on Tuesday when district residents go to the polls to answer the district’s three-part referendum question. Anyone 18 or older who lives within the district can vote on Tuesday from noon to 9 p.m. at Georgetown Elementary School, the John M. Clayton Building, Long Neck Elementary School, Millville Fire Hall, Selbyville Middle School and Sussex Central Middle School.

“We’re emphasizing the effort to get out and vote,” Miller said, despite the lack of participation. “We’re hoping our constituents will come out.”

The three questions in the referendum will ask the district residents to pay an additional 25.5 cents per $100 of assessed property value in the next two years to help pay for salary increases, building maintenance projects, roofs on three buildings and rising energy costs.

Miller said that when Delmarva Power’s rate cap is lifted May, Indian River Schools are going to suffer a hike anywhere from 64 percent to 117 percent. Last year, the district paid $686,000 in electric bills. Just by applying the hike, Miller said that the district will likely pay about $1.3 million in the same bills next year, an increase of almost 100 percent collectively.

The district does have plans in place for energy conservation, but because it is a peak-time energy user, those plans will not make much of a difference on next year’s increase in energy prices, Miller added.

“We could go to rotating schedules but we would still be a peak user,” he said. “We don’t have weekend schools. We don’t have evening schools. Our lights and our consumption is Monday through Friday, 8 to 5.”

Aside from the energy prices, the roofs have been a source of conversation at the meetings in the last couple of weeks. If the referendum is passed, each taxpayer will pay about $3.50 in the first year and nothing in the second to help the district replace the roofs on Selbyville Middle, North Georgetown and Long Neck Elementary Schools. Forty percent of the project is funded locally and the state picks up the rest.

Miller said that when the schools were being built from 1994 to 1996, contractors made a last-minute change so they wouldn’t exceed the budget and installed shingled instead of the originally-planned metal roofs.

Since the slope on the roofs weren’t re-evaluated before installing the shingles, the buildings have had leakage problems.

“We have pursued litigation. We have attempted to exercise the warranty. They have yielded nothing,” Miller said. “This is the last option. Once people have heard that, they have been understanding.”

The capital improvement question – regarding the roofs — will be the least costly for district residents in the 2006 referendum. The Current Expense question — which will ask residents not only to pay for rising energy costs and utilities but building maintenance and start-up costs at Georgetown Middle and East Millsboro as well — will be the most expensive.

If passed, each district property owner will pay $22.27 of the first year’s total of $38.68 and $8.21 of the second year’s $21.10. The final question will ask residents to partially fund a salary increase for district employees. The district will ask its residents to pay about $12 in the first and second years to help pay for a 4 percent salary increase, which works out to be about $491 more a year per employee.

Currently Indian River is last — or second to last — in all salary categories when compared to eight neighboring districts.

“The facts are the facts,” Miller said. “When we look at the test scores, our employees are outperforming (others) at a lower compensation. When we continue to lose employees, this is the reason.”

Miller also reiterated that the referendum is the final option to raise funds for these district projects. From 2002 to 2006, the school reduced its budgetary expenses by more than $5 million. Of the reductions, the district took about $2.5 million out of locally-funded teaching salaries and more than $570,000 in the district’s operational budgets. Since 1996, the district has also taken almost $600,000 out of the technology and science lab budgets.

A March 2004 passed referendum didn’t help much either, as it only asked for 5 cents per $100 of assessed value to pay for renovations and utility costs. Now, Miller said, he hopes the people who haven’t shown much interest in the last couple weeks will show up and help the district’s efforts on Tuesday, or it might have to look into other options.

“We don’t know that they’re getting the message of how important this referendum is,” Miller said. “Feedback wise, I don’t know what’s going on.”