Colfax school district referendum: mailers have gone out

By LeAnn R. Ralph

COLFAX  —  If you have not yet received a mailer sent out by the School District of Colfax with information about the $7.2 million referendum question in the November 8 election, the mailer should be arriving soon.

The mailers were sent out late last week, said Bill Yingst, district administrator.

The question voters will be asked is included in the mailer: “Shall the School District of Colfax, Chippewa and Dunn Counties, Wisconsin, be authorized to issue pursuant to Chapter 67 of the Wisconsin Statutes, general obligation bonds in an amount not to exceed $7,200,000 for the public purpose of paying the cost of a District-wide school improvement program consisting of additions, renovations and remodeling for classroom space and technical education/Science, Technology, Engineering and Math expansion; safety, security and building infrastructure improvements; demolition of temporary classrooms; construction of a bus maintenance building and replacement of buses; and acquisition of furnishings, fixtures and equipment?”

The referendum amount of $7.2 million includes $1.4 million to replace temporary classrooms that were meant to be used for less than a decade but have now been in use for 30 years with a 7,000 square-foot addition (the $1.4 million includes demolition of the temporary classrooms); $2.2 million for building infrastructure (energy efficiency items not selected in a previous project including heating and ventilation replacement and piping and controls).

In addition, the referendum amount includes $750,000 for a bus maintenance building (a maintenance garage and not the “bus barn” where the buses are parked); $1.2 million for technical education/STEM (improvement and expansion of existing tech ed areas including equipment and technology upgrades); $650,000 to improve safety and security (relocate the existing high school office to the east side of the building, card access, cameras).

The referendum amount also includes $600,000 to purchase six new liquid propane buses to begin the replacement cycle. Colfax runs 18 buses, so replacing one per year means that each bus must last 18 years.

The last item included in the referendum amount will be $400,000 to pay off the Wisconsin Retirement System “unfunded liability.”

All school districts in the state were required to start paying off the unfunded liability in the 1980s.

The total amount remaining to pay off the school district’s unfunded pension liability is $400,000.

The school district has been working on paying off the liability to the Wisconsin Retirement System for the last 27 years, since 1989, Yingst said.

The school district is paying $60,000 per year, and at the current pay rate, the unfunded liability would be paid off in 2029.

If the school district continues to make payments of $60,000 per year for the next 13 years, the total would amount to $780,000 — or nearly twice the amount the Board of Education is asking for in the referendum question.

Paying off the unfunded liability would give the school district an additional $60,000 per year in cash flow, Yingst noted, and could be used, for example, to pay for hiring another teacher.

Over the past five years, five teachers have retired who have not been replaced.

The Colfax school district lost $250,000 per year in state aid five years ago due to Act 10, which all but eliminated collective bargaining for most public employees.

In actual dollars, the school district is receiving less state aid now than the district received ten years ago.

The mailer includes information on how Colfax compares in tax levy to surrounding communities.

Colfax has the lowest tax levy, at $8.67 per $1,000 in property value, out of 15 local school districts.

The state average is $10.25 per $1,000 of property value.

If the $7.2 million referendum passes, the tax impact is estimated at an additional $77 per $100,000 of property value.

In the coming weeks, the Colfax Messenger plans to sit down with Superintendent Yingst to find out more about what is actually included in the referendum amounts, such as the $2.2 million for building infrastructure and the $1.2 million for technical education/STEM.

Community informational meetings about the referendum question are scheduled at the high school library Wednesday, October 26, at 7 p.m., and Thursday, November 3, at 7 p.m.