Coopersville Area Public Schools
By Jeffrey Cunningham Saying they wanted to avoid the November general election and make sure that voters in the district understand what they are voting on, the Coopersville Board of Education has decided to hold an election this spring to renew the district's 18-mill non-homestead tax.
The board will ask voters to renew the millage for a five-year period, instead of the one-year term the district has asked for every year since the millage was first implemented in the early 1990s.
The millage represents $1.236 million of the $23 million budget this year, according to district business manager Catherine Kloska.
Board members chose a five-year term rather than the typical one-year term as the district will have to pay for the election themselves at a cost of about $7,000.
The board decided to stay with a May election because they feared that moving to November general election with all of the other issues on the ballot, including voting for school board candidates, will be too many issues for voters to consider.
"By the time I get through voting during the presidential election (for all the items on the ballot), I am so tired that I don't want to vote yes on anything and this would be the last thing on the ballot," said Board President Stacey Snyder.
Superintendent Ron Veldman said that he understands that holding the election in May is slightly contrary to the intent of the legislators who wanted all of the school elections to be held on general election dates so that the districts wouldn't be footing the bill for special elections.
"This issue wasn't even on our radar until late last year when the legislature passed the bill saying we had to move elections," Veldman said.
Right now, he said, some districts are staying with one-year terms for the 18-mill non-homestead tax while others are going to multiple-year terms. Some districts are voting as soon as February on their non-homestead renewals while others have moved their elections to November.
"We hope that in the next four years, there is some clarity to this and other issues," Veldman said. "Then we can decide if we want to vote on the non-homestead tax renewal in August or November. But this tax is too important to our budget this year for people not to know what they are voting on."
Board members also voted to extend the term of the seven members of the school board from their current four-year terms to six-year terms starting with this November's election.
The state legislature recently required all districts in the state to hold their school board elections in November of even-numbered years as a way of saving taxpayer money. Leaders of several districts in the area, including Kent Swinson, superintendent of Sparta Area Schools, have criticized the move, saying that by holding elections in November, new school board members will take office in the middle of the fiscal year as well as the actual school year, making it more difficult for the new board members to get up to speed with the budget issues as well as other issues in the district.
In Coopersville, extending the board terms to six years means that two board seats will be open every two years and three seats will be open the third cycle. Over the last 25 years, board members on average served at least eight years on the board, according to research by Coopersville's Veldman.