Florence 1 school bond referendum fails
Shireese Bell/Morning News
Published: November 6, 2007
Florence voters rejected Florence School District 1’s $125 million bond referendum aimed at building seven schools and changing grade configurations for middle school students. Published: November 6, 2007
Voters defeated the bond referendum, 3,149 votes to 2,981 — a difference of 168 votes — during Tuesday’s election.
There’s a total of 76,630 registered voters in Florence County. The number of voters able to participate in the bond referendum vote was 54,686.
Superintendent Larry Jackson wasn’t available for comment on the bond referendum vote by press time Tuesday.
Jackson previously said that no matter what happened Tuesday, he would work just as hard as he does already to teach and help Florence 1 students improve.
Florence 1 Board chairman Porter Stewart said he was disappointed with the result of the bond referendum vote, and that it would probably be a discussion item at the board’s regular meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday.
“We will have an opportunity, collectively, to look at this at that time,” Stewart said. “(I’m) obviously disappointed that we would not be moving (forward) with the proposed projects, but we will take a look Thursday (to) discuss and assess circumstances of our building needs and collectively come to a consensus at that time.”
The passage of the bond referendum would have helped the district reduce the number of portable classrooms and class sizes, upgrade outdated facilities, and meet the demands of growth in the district, particularly the western part of Florence.
Florence 1 spends about $1 million in portable or mobile classrooms, school district officials said. The district has 172 mobile classrooms. Twelve doublewide mobiles count as 24 classrooms, and there are 148 singlewides.
The district also wanted to move to a standard grade level configuration for middle school students, meaning sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students would attend the same school.
If the bond referendum had passed, the district would have used the funds to build a new elementary school to alleviate overcrowded conditions at Carver and Delmae Heights elementary schools; a new Delmae Heights; a new elementary school on U.S. 327 to replace Wallace-Gregg and Henry Timrod elementary schools; a new Royall Elementary School; a new North Vista Elementary School; a new Southside Middle School; an additional new middle school; and renovations to Williams Middle School.
The bond referendum would have lasted 30 years and would have been paid with debt service mills only. The money would not have been spent on school operating costs.
The referendum called for an increase of 4.5 debt service mills, bringing the total debt service mills to 23.50 mills.
A property owner with an assessed value of $100,000 pays $76 in taxes on debt service mills. If the referendum had passed, that home owner would have paid $94 a year, an increase of $18. For commercial property with an assessed value of $100,000, the owner pays $114, but would have paid $141.
A $2,754,000 general obligation bond would have been used to pay contracts and purchase land to build the three schools proposed in the district’s $125 million referendum.
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