MONTICELLO, N.Y. — Monticello school district residents rejected a $110 million plan to overhaul the district's schools in a referendum on Thursday.
The vote came almost four months after residents narrowly voted down a similar $100 million capital plan to overhaul Monticello's schools.
This time, 940 people voted "no" to 852 who voted "yes," more than doubling the turnout of December's referendum, according to Superintendent Tammy Mangus at Thursday's school board meeting.
In the previous referendum, the margin was just 30 votes.
"Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out," Mangus said, quoting the late UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. "Despite the outcome, this board should be proud."
The results are unofficial. The final tally was a blow to the school board, turning its meeting at Robert J. Kaiser Middle School into a solemn one.
"It's just disappointing that the community wasn't able to throw its support behind the project," said Stacy Sharoff, board president.
She called it an amazing opportunity to fix what was broken in the district without significantly raising taxes.
Like the previous plan that residents voted on in December, the project would be completed in two phases.
Phase one would have added $48 in taxes for the owner of a home assessed at $100,000. The second phase would have cost that homeowner an additional $37, for a total of $85.
The capital plan would have reopened Duggan Elementary, updated the three other elementary schools, and renovated the middle and high schools. It also included upgrades to the track, football field, grandstand, tennis courts and baseball fields.
School district leaders have described these improvements as crucial for the health, safety and education of students.
They included upgrades to heating and cooling systems, new stormwater management systems to eliminate flooding at the high school and bringing classrooms up to date.
The district has had to close portions of buildings for safety concerns.
Parent Rita Tepan, of White Lake, didn't vote Thursday, but agreed Monticello's schools needed the improvements. However, she said the money shouldn't come from increased school taxes.
"We pay a lot of taxes already, especially where we live in White Lake," Tepan said.
The timing of Thursday's vote was crucial because of the lengthy process for school district projects to get approved by the state.
Mangus previously said the referendum couldn't wait until the budget vote in May because the district is about to pay off the bond that built the middle school in July 2019 and wants to replace it with this debt package so it gets more building aid from the state.
Moving forward, Mangus said Thursday that the district will have difficult decisions to make.
The district has $8 million in its capital reserves and will have to prioritize health and safety projects, she said.
"Change is difficult," Mangus said. "Doing things differently than you've always done it is difficult and we're gonna make the best of what we have here."
