I’ve covered several school bond issues over the past three years, and I often get questions from people in one town about how things happened in another town. Many of the area’s bond issues center on the same few general issues — “Think of the children!” vs. “But is now the right time?” is a big one — but there are several factors that set each one apart. Here’s a quick guide to the central themes running through each of the area’s school bond campaigns over the past three years. 

Ord
As I wrote in today’s paper, Ord’s $9.8 million bond issue seems to come down to one defining issue: Are the school’s fire and ventilation issues best addressed along with a new gym, or should they be considered separately? Pro-bond folks say it doesn’t make sense to fix one without the other, especially since the school says the cheapest way to resolve fire issues in the library is to move it to the current practice gym — thus necessitating a new gym.

People who oppose the bond issue say the school has other options for fixing all of these issues rather than lumping them together in one multimillion-dollar bond issue. They say the school district hasn’t done a diligent enough job looking at those alternatives and that they’ve been steadily guided toward a bond issue by their architects, Bahr, Vermeer and Haecker of Lincoln.

St. Paul
St. Paul’s $4.7 million bond issue for elementary and high school expansions along with fixes for fire and safety code issues passed last November. It never faced any organized opposition, but the big issue there had to do with timing: The vote took place just after the nation’s economy fell headlong into its recession. As Superintendent Doug Ackles noted last October, the bond’s chances were better in a poor economy because it was a nuts-and-bolts project designed to resolve overcrowding issues and meet fire code requirements.

Like Ord, St. Paul faced a fix-it-or-else order from the state fire marshal, which added some urgency. But had St. Paul’s project been a gym or an auditorium, Ackles said, it might have been a tougher sell.

Broken Bow
Broken Bow’s proposed $9.4 million bond issue for a new elementary school was pummeled at the polls in May 2008. The central issue there was somewhat similar to Ord’s: Opponents of the bond wanted the school to fix the current elementary buildings, which they acknowledged were in poor shape, rather than building a new one. This ended up setting up the “Resolve it all in one shot” vs. “Save money and fix things gradually” conflict that we’re also seeing in Ord.

Just as in Ord, opponents also lobbied for the school board to explore other options and questioned its exclusive use of Bahr, Vermeer and Haecker to plan the project.

Central City
Central City’s bond issue, a $4.6 million one for a new performing arts center, was the outlier among the area’s recent school bonds. First, it began with private fundraising, rather than a community facilities committee. The move toward a bond began when a local couple left $600,000 in their estate for an arts center. A school committee raised money to bring pledges for an endowment for the center’s upkeep to $1.5 million, and then the district voted to pursue a bond.

There was no organized opposition to this bond, either, but it failed on its first try in November 2007. Some of the opposition, as always, had to do with cost, but some of it also had to do with the center’s proposed location at the school and how much the community would be able to use it. When the district tried again in May 2008, it passed, though the vote total wasn’t much different from the first attempt.

Gibbon
Gibbon’s $16.3 million school bond for a new K-12 school was far larger than any of the others (a 48.9-cent levy), and while there was little organized opposition before the vote, much of the talk focused on the project’s sheer size. After the bond passed in September 2006, the opposition came out of the woodwork in the form of an attempt to recall half the school board.

The recall essentially served as a referendum on the bond issue six months after the initial vote (and it passed again, as the board members retained their spots). The recall group’s primary contention was that the school board had concealed the true cost of the bond and — stop me if you’ve heard this one before — didn’t consider less costly alternatives to building a new school. (And yes, the school also hired Bahr, Vermeer and Haecker.) Opposition died down after the recall’s failure, and the new building opened its doors in August.