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MONEY MATTER$

Published 10/10/2008 in News : Education

By EMILY BEHLMANN

ebehlmann@gctelegram.com

The fact that economic turmoil has been a part of daily headlines and conversations lately certainly won't help the chances of a successful bond issue for Garden City USD 457, several experts said.

But in the Nov. 4 election, economic conditions probably aren't as important to the bond vote as some other factors, some said.

The $97.5 million bond issue would pay for the USD 457 Board of Education's long-range facility plan, in which the most costly component is a $92.5 million high school to replace the current one. To be constructed north of Mary Street and east of Campus Drive inside the U.S. Highway 50/83/400 Bypass, the school would be built with expansion in mind, so it could house 2,500 students in the future, according to architects. The remainder of bond issue funds would go toward conversion of the current GCHS building into a middle school, conversion of Abe Hubert Middle School into an elementary school and expansion of Garfield Elementary School into a centralized early-childhood center.

According to the school district, the bond issue would cost the homeowner of a $100,000 home $109.94 a year for 25 years; the $250,000 commercial business owner $597.50 a year for 25 years; and the agricultural property owner $68.83 per 160 acres every year for 25 years, for dry crop land.

Uncertainty, nervousness

Numerous voters have said they think the cost is high, with one Garden City business owner, Julie Rupp of The Good Sport, saying people already are nervous about their finances in an uncertain economy.

That only makes sense, according to Joseph Aistrup, professor and head of the political science department at Kansas State University.

"Usually bad economic times ... may lead some voters to think twice about voting for additional taxes," he said. "Bad times tend to lead people to first and foremost think about how they're going to pay their bills. School bonds, road improvements -- these other things are less of a priority."

Yet William Hoston, professor of political science at Wichita State University, said the economy's sway on voters in a bond election might be more psychological than realistic.

Although funds to cover Congress' $700 billion bailout plan for buying distressed mortgages ultimately will come from tax dollars, the issue isn't directly connected to the local property taxes that would go up in a successful bond election, he said.

"Psychologically, they'll try to connect the dots, but the question is, 'Will those dots be connected appropriately?'" Hoston said. "Overall, what I tend to see is voters will attempt to provide a correlation to this issue. ... People are just generally nervous."

The nervousness could be showing elsewhere, too, like in Wichita, where voters will be considering in November a $370 million school district bond issue. There, a KWCH-TV survey asked, "How much of an impact gas prices and the economy have on how you vote?" Of 500 voters, 37 percent answered "major," 26 percent said "minor" and 33 percent said "no impact at all."

Other factors

With economic turbulence highly visible just weeks ahead of the election, voters could indeed stop and think that they'd like to hold on to the money that, with a successful bond, would go toward funding the school facilities, said Justin Marlowe, professor in public administration at the University of Kansas. That money might come in handy, they'd think, maybe to put gas in the car. But Marlowe said he thinks the economy has a bigger impact on votes like the presidential election. Locally, there are a lot of other, more influential reasons people vote for or against school bond issues.

Some more formal studies back up his point. Unexpected incidents, such as a stock market crash or a terrorist attack on the country, can tend to have a negative effect on bond elections, according to a 1995 study of four school bond elections by Don E. Lifto.

However, when David Jerome Faltys, of Texas A&M University, reviewed literature on the issue for a study on a Texas bond issue, he noted that a lot of other factors seemed to have a bigger influence for voters. Among them were level of organization in a campaign, quality of public relations, interest level of people with children in the district, number of schools/students affected, level of growth in the district, school personnel involvement, trust in the administration and other issues on the ballot.

"People's perception of whether (the bond project) is necessary, whether the district is meeting needs, whether it's delivering education in ways that are consistent to what people want -- that all comes to bear," Marlowe said. "What it boils down to at the end of the day is citizens' perceptions of whether the additional taxes they'll pay are worth it, and everybody defines 'worth it' in a different way."

Aistrup expressed a similar view, saying tax increases for major projects can be approved because some voters think about more than just their own pocketbooks.

"Voters aren't always selfish," he said. "For properly justified bond issues, they will probably be sympathetic."

The other direction

Another factor that could make the bond issue election hard to predict is that the economy could sway some voters toward a "yes" vote rather than a "no," Marlowe said.

For them, the thought would be that the project needs to get done anyway, and the costs are escalating quickly.

"They'd want to pay for it now instead of later -- get it over with," he said.

USD 457 school district administrators and architects have cited rising construction costs as a reason the facilities issues need to be addressed soon. Stewart Nelson, of the local firm Gibson, Mancini, Carmichael Nelson, said he expects that if the $97.5 million project were delayed a year, the price tag would increase by about $6 million.

"There's never a good time to raise people's taxes," Superintendent Rick Atha said. "No matter the state of the economy, it has to weigh on all of us, but we're still charged to educate our children."

Get the latest news on the USD 457 bond issue at the "Up to the minute" Web log at http://gctbond.wordpress.com.

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