One more way to look at the numbers

Published 2:00 pm Saturday, February 11, 2006

There’s always a pins-and-needles period for public school supporters in advance of a levy or bond measure. Perhaps more so this year as Bainbridge volunteers campaign for both a $45 million school construction bond and a $6.1 million technology levy, following the island’s first school levy defeat in decades last spring.

If the mood in other districts is any indication, there’s reason for optimism; asked to decide funding measures for everything from general operations to new school buses, voters in Puget Sound-area districts were overwhelming in their support this week. Mercer Island voters gave the nod to a new operations levy and a transportation measure, with both earning better than 70 percent; support was similarly strident in Bellevue for both education and technology levies, while Issaquah voters approved by wide margins a slate of four school-related measures. Closer to home, the North and Central Kitsap districts and Bremerton all passed levies comfortably, and even the somewhat-less-than-upscale North Mason School District squeaked a funding measure through.

Whether this tide of taxpayer confidence regionwide will be reflected in twin school measures on Bainbridge Island – mail ballots go out in two weeks, for the putative March 14 election date – remains to be seen. We tend to think last year’s tech levy failure was a hiccup, and that islanders will reaffirm their traditionally strong support of public instruction this time around. Certainly, the needs are straightforward. The construction bond addresses an aging and badly overcrowded high school, as well as nuts-and-bolts upkeep throughout the district – boilers and heating system, roofs and other basic requirements to keep the school buildings open. The tech levy would begin to redress the woeful state of educational computing and lesson projection in our classrooms. Basic stuff, all.

’Twixt now and the ballot’s arrival, you may be hearing from the folks at the campaign asking for your vote. And among

the more interesting materials making the rounds is a chart tracking the voter-approved tax burden for Bainbridge

schools over the past nine years, since the district passed its last construction bond. It’s worth considering.

Back in 1998, the owner of a median-priced island home paid about $1,170 for voter-approved school levies and bonds. That bill has trailed off a bit since then, as new homes have helped divide out the individual tax burden and old debt has been retired. Should both upcoming funding measures pass – and we trust they will – total annual cost for Bainbridge school bonds and levies in 2007 would be about $1,462 for the median homeowner. Adjusted to 1998 dollars, that’s $1,164 – almost to the dollar what you were paying 10 years ago.

Why look at it that way? It makes a credible case that the upcoming bond and tech levy would not be adding a “new” tax burden for schools, but rather restoring funding for our schools to a level approved by islanders a decade ago, and which has waned over the ensuing decade.

Yes, it’s real money; new buildings and modern classroom equipment don’t pay for themselves. But it’s nothing we haven’t been willing to pay in the past.