WILLMAR -- The Willmar School Board may be backing away from an ambitious election schedule that could have had voters considering a building construction plan this summer and an operating levy in the fall.
No decisions have been made yet. Those are likely to come at regular board meetings on Feb. 11 and Feb. 25.
However, board members at an informal board workshop meeting Tuesday appeared to be reconsidering the timeline laid out for them at a Jan. 28 board meeting.
That tentative timeline for a vote on building a new elementary school and updating other buildings in the district had been requested by the board last fall. It would have led to a vote on a multimillion-dollar bond issue in June.
However, board members said Tuesday they were concerned that they and the public need more time to look at the options for building a new elementary school and updating other buildings in the district. They also worried that an operating levy vote could be in jeopardy if the public is also asked to approve a large building project in the same year.
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The discussion turned to separating a more immediate need like the levy from the long-term need for a building project.
Board member Brad Schmidt posed some questions to the board. "Have we brought this back to the community specifically enough," he asked. "Are we pushing too fast?"
Board member Dion Warne agreed that "this is coming up quicker than we thought."
The building plan grew out of comments made at public forums over several years, said board chairman Mike Carlson. It may be necessary to hold another series of forums to present the proposed plan to the public, he said.
Discussion turned to the possibility of asking voters to look at an excess levy for operating expenses this year while the board spends the next year considering the building plan and providing information to the public.
The building program is a long-term need, looking at preparing the district for the coming decades, Warne said.
Board members agreed that the levy is the more immediate need for the district.
"If the Legislature does not provide funding, this operating levy is a must," Superintendent Kathy Leedom told the board.
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An operating levy would help the district maintain educational programs, keep a balanced budget and maintain the size of the fund balance, said Leedom and Business and Finance Director Pam Harrington.
The district may need to cut about $1.2 million from its $40 million general fund budget before the next school year to keep the reserve from shrinking beyond the district's target of 6 percent of expenditures. A 6 percent fund balance is equal to about three weeks' expenses.
Willmar has cut more than $1.5 million from the budget in the past few years. For this school year, the district added about $900,000 back to the budget to meet increasing student needs in some areas.
About $350,000 of the cuts this year might be made anyway because of declining enrollment, Leedom said.
The district now has a local operating levy of $498 per pupil-unit. The state average is $760 per pupil. Willmar would receive additional state aid if it had a levy of $700, Harrington said.
In the coming year, Minnesota school districts will receive a 1 percent increase in the basic funding formula, while inflation is causing the cost of transportation, heating and health care to rise faster than that.
