St. Michael-Albertville Levy Committee Lays out its Levy Referendum Recommendations

Now may be a tough time for school districts to approach voters with hat in hand, but the decision has been made in St. Michael-Albertville that additional funds are critical to future success in the school district. 

At Monday evening’s board meeting, the district’s levy referendum committee, led by former long-time board member Chuck Lefebvre, laid out its recommendations for this fall’s levy referendum that they hope will be a mix of funding relief and budget practicality that voters can support.

 The committee recommended raising the current levy from $500 to $695 per pupil unit, which adds up to an additional $1.1 million per year. They based this figure on the following needs: $500,000 to replace federal jobs funding that would otherwise be eliminated in the 2012-2013 school year, $300,000 to support the district’s technology offerings, and $300,000 as a catch-all for needed additional funds, with possible uses being maintaining class sizes, transportation or maintaining current activities. As this was just a committee recommendation, the board may fine-tune these numbers and priorities where they best see fit.

“The committee thought that those three messages as the purpose for the extra levy would be something they could support and probably the community could support,” said Lefebvre.

 The committee felt strongly that the ballot be as straightforward and as simple as possible, with only one question asked of the voters rather than having one question asked to simply renew the existing levy and a second to increase the funding; they felt the measure would have a better chance at passing with only one question asked.

 “The way people’s minds work usually is that if you give them two, they will pass one and fail the other one,” said committee member Tom Haggerty. “Because you need these dollars so badly, I think you need to go with the single question.”

 While the additional levy money still leaves STMA over $150 per pupil unit below the state average of $850, Lefebvre said this number was decided upon because it was a number the diverse thinkers on the levy committee agreed that STMA residents could reasonably support.

The levy would add $88 per year in taxes to a $200,000 home, which would average around a $7-$10.50 per month increase for an average home in the district.

 Lefebvre noted that while the district currently ranks 329 out of 339 school districts in the state for general funding and is below the state average for levy funding, the school district does rank number 2 in the state for bonding because of the number of new schools built recently to facilitate a booming population increase in the two cities in the past decade.

 Superintendent Dr. Marcia Ziegler said the effort to pass this referendum will take money, and they do not want to waste money by asking for more than they think voters will agree to, especially given the current economic situation.

 “Could we use more? Absolutely,” Ziegler said, noting that nearby Delano will be asking for a referendum increase from $465 to $1,065 this fall.  

 “Staying under the $700 mark seems like a practical thing to do, and I think the people of St. Michael and Albertville are practical people,” board member Gayle Weber said. “It’s not going to make it easy for us to budget, but it will make it workable.”

 This referendum recommendation was accepted by the board, but it was not approved the by board. Board chair Doug Birk said the board would now take the committee’s recommendations, discuss the options and wait to see the final results of the current legislative session before coming to a final decision.