A decision could come as soon as this week on the timeline for renovating North Penn High School — and a referendum for residents on paying for it.
District officials heard last week about the specifics of a voter referendum asking taxpayers to approve borrowing for a school expansion.
“Ideally, the dream is a fully educated community that turns out, knows what this is about, has reviewed the plan, has toured the high school, has formed an informed opinion, and they come out and say yes or no on whether to do the ninth grade piece,” said referendum consultant Mike Paston.
“That doesn’t happen in America. As great a democracy as we have, you will get a lesser percentage, and a lesser percentage of that will be informed, to some degree. But it’s your job to educate them,” he said.
Renovations to the high school have been discussed for much of the past decade, and district staff and the district’s architect The Schrader Group made a pair of presentations outlining the high school’s recent equipment failures in February, then gave cost estimates in March for two options: adding a new ninth-grade wing of the school and include middle school renovations at an estimated price tag of roughly $400 million, or a smaller project to update the high school without a new wing for roughly $236 million.
Construction timelines were discussed in April, RFPs were issued in May and June for a construction management firm and an RFP consultant to oversee a voter referendum needed to approve an estimated $94 million in borrowing for the new addition, and in July staff said the referendum talks could be overseen by Schrader personnel instead of an outside firm.
‘Everything on the Table’
Since then, the district has worked with Schrader to refine the design for a new high school, including at a public input meeting in July where dozens of residents tried their hand at locating various classroom buildings and other facilities on the high school campus.
Next steps in that process were detailed in a school board meeting on Aug. 8, in a presentation from Paston, Schrader’s expert on such voter referendums, who explained how and when the process would work, and the do’s and don’ts.
“You’re going to put everything on the table. It’s going to take a lot of effort, but you have to be transparent. You have to talk about the positives and the negatives. You have to talk about, there is going to be a tax increase relative to the size of the project,” he said.
The next two scheduled municipal elections will be held on Nov. 7, 2023 and on April 23, 2024, and the Pennsylvania primary date could be changed between now and then if the state legislature chooses to do so, Paston told the board.
Using one of those two dates could yield higher turnout, but voters motivated by other races at the state or national level, he said, and Schrader has indicated they likely won’t be ready for this November so the April date will be up for board consideration.
A special election could produce a more focused electorate, with only one reason for voters to come to the polls, and could turn out voters such as independents who don’t usually vote at primaries.
“The outcome will be pure. There’s no second-guessing. If you have an election where the only thing on the ballot is your yes or no question, it’s really hard to second-guess other influences that came to play,” he said.
Such a special election must be held 90 or more days before a scheduled election, so for the April 23, 2024, date the 90-day window would end on Jan. 23, 2024, Paston told the board. The school board would need to adopt a resolution for that special election less than 30 days before a scheduled election, so county officials can put info on ballots, and 45 or more days before the special election, yielding a window of Oct. 8 to Nov. 6 for a January scheduled election.
Board vice president Christian Fusco asked what would happen if the state legislature moves the primary election date off of April 23, and Paston answered: “We’d have to have this presentation again, and talk about a different date.”
“It’s the state legislature, so you never know. They did pass a budget, sort of, but we have to go with what we have now,” Paston said.
Board member Cathy Wesley asked if a December special election would be possible, and Paston said doing so would be possible, “but November’s a really tricky month to get people’s attention. It just gets really messy, with holidays and other things. But we can look at it,” and he’ll meet with the county board of elections in coming weeks to find out specifics. Early cost estimates are that the district would need to pay roughly $340,000 to hold the special election, and that cost will be refined soon.
District CFO Steve Skrocki added that January would likely be the earliest date possible, based on when cost estimates from Schrader could be finalized, and the board could take action to do so.
When to Vote?
Possible dates that “seem to make sense,” Paston said, would be January 9th, 16th or 23 in 2024, and the first could be too close to a winter break for families to return and get informed. The 16th falls just after a holiday, which “can be positive or negative” in seeking high turnout, and the 23rd “is always a possibility.”
The wording of the ballot question must be specific, and will ask voters “Shall debt in the sum of X dollars for the purpose of financing additional costs to transform North Penn High School to accommodate grades nine through 12 be authorized to be incurred as debt approved by the electors?”
Both the Montgomery and Bucks county boards of elections must approve that language, since the district has voters in both, and the dollar amount is still to be determined, Paston said, while the board and consultant also must publicize a plain English statement for voters.
“You attempt to explain: if you vote yes, it means the following. If you vote no, it means the following,” he said.
As of early August the district has a total of 72,434 registered voters in Montgomery County, and the referendum would need 50 percent plus one vote of the total in Montgomery and Bucks for the referendum to pass. In 2021 general election turnout was roughly 35.5 percent of registered voters, and Paston said the board ideally should aim for participation to be as high as possible.
“Passing it and having a nine percent turnout, really isn’t the greatest thing either. Because then you have a lot of people sitting at home going ‘Well, I wasn’t part of that. I know it passed, but it was only 5,000 people that voted yes.’ You want as high a number for turnout, and then you find out how it goes,” he said.
Next steps include finalizing the dollar amount to be included on the ballot question, formally passing a board resolution with the question and date, passing it via board vote and then sending it to the county boards of election. After those steps, public education would inform voters about the issue, and no public funds can be spent on advocating for or against.
“Your education piece is a whole lot, but it stops at the ‘You need to vote yes.’ The district cannot spend money to advocate. You’re going to educate,” Paston said.
His firm’s recommendation is the Jan. 16 date, with the Jan. 23 option as a backup; board discussion then followed after a Q-and-A on specifics. Wesley asked about the Bucks voters, and Paston said the total vote count in both combined must be over 50 percent — “a very small group of people in Bucks County cannot derail this for you.”
Plenty of questions
Board member Juliane Ramic asked where the plain language statement should be posted or advertised, and Paston said it likely would be required to be posted at all polling places, and could be sent to district families too, along with the district’s own information, such as a link to their dedicated website for the high school renovations.
“The plain language isn’t going to say, ‘Here’s all the reasons you want ninth graders at the high school.’ It’s going to say, ‘A yes vote means the district will be authorized to borrow X amount of money, and the debt will not be part of the budgeting'” during those years listed in the statement, he said.
Common arguments include that projects often go over budget, and the language would state that the debt incurred via referendum does fall off after the time period listed in the statement, Paston said. Board member Tim MacBain asked how the district would pay for the election costs, and Skrocki said it’s not currently included in the district’s 2023-24 budget, but could be spent from capital reserves or budget surplus funds.
Wesley asked for details on the transparency issues seen at other districts, and Paston said he’d present on lessons learned from other similar attempts at a future meeting. If the vote fails, a similar one could not be held for at least six months; Wesley then asked what would happen if an unforeseen condition occurs, and Paston said cost allowances would likely be included in the bid packages that lead into the cost estimate, after vetting by a construction management firm and the architect.
Bauer and Skrocki added that the next step for the board would be to vote on whether the referendum question should be addressed at a scheduled or special election, and solicitor Kyle Somers said the formal board vote on Aug. 8 “would simply be to have this topic appear on the agenda” for the board’s Aug. 17 meeting.
“It would likely be authorizing the administration to prepare, and take all necessary steps, in planning for a special election to occur. Perhaps we’ll identify a general month, but not setting a specific date at this point,” Somers said.
Fusco then made a motion “to move this discussion to our action meeting on Aug. 17,” and board member Al Roesch seconded; the full board then approved unanimously. The school board next meets at 7 p.m. that night at the district Educational Services Center, 401 E. Hancock Street; for more information visit www.NPenn.org.
This article appears courtesy of a content share agreement between North Penn Now and The Reporter. To read more stories like this, visit www.thereporteronline.com.
See also:
North Penn School District Appoints New Principal for Walton Farm
Letter: North Penn Superintendent Provides Update on Renovation Plans for North Penn High School
North Penn School District Announces Important Back to School Dates
North Penn High School Students Will Explore Careers Virtually Thanks to Locally Funded Grant
Development of Renovation Plans for North Penn High School Continues
