After hearing feedback from Park Ridge voters about whether they would support a $98.36 million referendum, Park Ridge-Niles District School District 64 is lowering its ask by $6 million.
The Board of Education approved lowering its proposal to $92.38 million at its Committee of the Whole meeting on July 17. The cuts will require the district to use more of its existing capital project funds for building repairs and maintenance and to scale back on some upgrades to the district’s eight schools.
“We definitely took to heart everything that was said at the last board meeting (when the poll results were presented). We cross-referenced our goals with our strategic plan and then looked again at what polled where and where things were laying with that group of people that weighed in,” said Superintendent Ben Collins.
The poll, conducted by consultants hired by the district, found that the referendum asking voters for $98 million had slim support from Park Ridge voters who had higher levels of “tax sensitivity,” according to the consultants.
“People are concerned with the tax impact, which is understandable. The Board’s intention is to bring (the referendum amount) down a bit,” said Chief School Business Official Adam Parisi.
The Board’s recommendations include using $2 million from capital improvement funds to address HVAC, boilers, chillers, and flooring issues at Emerson Middle School, Field Elementary, Franklin Elementary School, Roosevelt Elementary School, and Washington Elementary School.
Plans to convert Carpenter Elementary School’s basement auditorium into a multipurpose room would be scrapped, but issues with its foundation would be repaired. Emerson’s music room renovation would be reduced, and a small addition to it would also be cut, lowering the cost of renovations by $1.7 million.
Renovations would also decrease by $2.2 million by cutting furniture replacements at Emerson and deferring improvements to the school’s career technology and education suite.
The district put together a property tax calculator for residents to input the value of their homes to find out how much their property taxes would increase if the referendum were to pass. According to Chris Lilly, the district’s communications specialist, the tax calculator hasn’t been updated to reflect the district’s up-to-date referendum question, but it will do so once the district has a finalized referendum question. The district created a chart comparing the annual impact of different scenarios of potential referendum amounts.
The district began putting together a proposal to repair and improve its school buildings, including for safety and technological purposes, in January. The Board of Education was first pitched by the architects it hired for the renovations to spend $145 million on renovations to the district’s schools. That figure was later lowered to $98 million and then to $92 million.
The Board will have until its final vote at its Aug. 15 board meeting to decide the dollar amount it will ask from voters on the Nov. 5 ballot. Parisi said there was a possibility the referendum would ask for less money, as the board mulls improvements to playgrounds across all of its schools.
The deadline for a governing body to add a referendum question to the ballot for the Nov. 5 election is Aug. 19, and it would be “extremely unlikely” for the board to take any more action between its Aug. 15 meeting and the deadline, Parisi said.
