Hockinson School District voters appeared to split on two levies up for vote in Tuesday night’s special election.
The district’s three-year replacement operations levy was 17 votes ahead as of Tuesday night, while a three-year technology levy was trailing by 121 votes. A simple majority is required for the levies to pass.
Voters came out against both measures in February, making Hockinson the only district of 40 statewide to have a replacement programs and operations levy fail. In that election, the replacement three-year levy failed with 52.54 percent votes against the levy, and a three-year technology levy drew less support, with 53.94 of the vote going against the measure.
“We’re hopeful,” Superintendent Sandra Yager said Tuesday night. “We’ll see what happens in the next few days.”
Yager said she thinks the technology levy — which received 1,400 votes against and 1,279 for as of Tuesday — is a little too far behind to catch up at this point, but she’s not ruling it out. She said she remains optimistic about the replacement levy, which “is the one we are in very much in need to have for the future of our programs and students,” she said.
As of Tuesday, the replacement levy sat at 50.32 percent and 1,353 votes in favor against 1,336 votes, or 49.68 percent, against.
If the results hold, Yager said the district’s budget for the 2019-2020 school year should be OK.
“We will be tight, but we will not have to do any cuts,” she said.
If the results turn later in the week and the replacement levy fails, the district is facing some issues for the next two school years. Yager said prior to the election that if both levies failed, the cuts could range from $1.5 million to $1.8 million for the 2019-2020 school year.
The district sought a three-year replacement operations levy at $1.50 per $1,000 of assessed value for all three years, which would be used to keep class sizes down, help fund special education programs, extracurricular activities and athletics.
The technology levy would start in 2020, and the district asked for an estimated 45 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, followed by 40 cents per $1,000 in 2021 and 36 cents per $1,000 in 2022. That money would be used for technology refreshes, safety and security upgrades, heating and cooling improvements and capital improvements.
Because of legislation passed in response to the McCleary decision, local levies can only go up to $1.50 per $1,000 of assessed property value. Michelle Scott, director of business services for the district, said earlier this year that Hockinson was originally scheduled to collect nearly $5 million in local levy dollars until the levy cap. The district is now anticipating collecting about $2.4 million from local levies this year.
In 2018, Hockinson’s levy rate was $3.43 per $1,000 of assessed. If the two levies pass, the estimated combined levy rate for residents would be $1.95 per $1,000 of assessed value in 2020, $1.90 per $1,000 of assessed value in 2021 and $1.86 per $1,000 of assessed value in 2022.
Yager said there has been a lot of talk about levies and school funding in recent months between the new state funding model, local teacher strikes and the two elections. She also said Hockinson has a lot of retired residents on fixed incomes who have said they don’t want to vote to raise taxes.
“All of those things have been talked about,” Yager said. “They’re real. We have to put out there what we can in order to do the best for our students to have the same opportunities as kids around the state. We do see that there are a lot of tensions in how we make the decisions in what we support and what we can’t.”
