Grass-roots groups are popping up across Snohomish County, pushing a statewide ballot measure that would make it easier to pass school maintenance and operation levies.
Voters will decide Nov. 6 whether to lower the passing percentage from a 60 percent supermajority to a simple majority, 50 percent plus one vote.
The Legislature passed House Joint Resolution 4204 to amend the state Constitution, leaving it for voters to ratify or reject the ballot proposal.
To Karen Madsen, an Everett School District board member and longtime levy committee organizer, the simple majority is an equity issue.
While public votes to build jails and stadiums require a simple majority, school measures require 60 percent. Schools should get to meet the same standard, she said.
“The fundamental issue of fairness stays the same no matter how you vote,” she said. “It’s about the public having the right to have their vote count the same, where a ‘yes’ vote counts the same as a ‘no’ vote.”
Everett is one of many local communities where volunteers are forming groups to push the measure, in some cases assembling phone banks to call voters.
“For every one of us, it’s a local issue, even though it’s a statewide ballot measure,” Madsen said.
Debate over whether to let school levies pass with a simple majority swirled around the Legislature for decades. It took a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate to send the measure to the ballot, where it will need a simple majority to pass.
No organized opposition groups have registered with the state Public Disclosure Commission, but many Republican lawmakers argued over the years that it shouldn’t be made easier to pass tax measures.
“This is a 30-year campaign to really level the playing field for our kids in schools,” said Bill Monto, state campaign manager for the pro-4204 group, People for Our Public Schools.
Kip Henson is a custodian at Meadowdale Elementary School and president of the Edmonds School District’s classified workers union that represents employees other than teachers. He said he volunteered for a committee in his community not just to try to save jobs, but to make sure schools are well maintained and class sizes don’t get too big.
“When the class sizes have to rise, it takes a toll on the teachers,” he said.
School districts turn to voters every one to four years to pass levies, which provide additional funds for such things as more teachers and aides, salary increases, athletic and other programs, transportation and building maintenance. Levies account for about 16 percent of school district budgets statewide.
Unlike school bond measures, most levy proposals renew an existing tax.
School bond measures pay for construction of new buildings and remodeling of old ones and are included in a separate ballot measure. They represent a new tax and would continue to need a 60 percent supermajority to pass.
Darrington is another community forming a group to campaign for HJR 4204.
“We are way overdue for this,” said Darrington Superintendent Larry Johnson. “Find me something more important to the state than educating our kids.”
Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or stevick@heraldnet.com.
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