Most Spokane County school levies pass
By Doug Nadvornick, Spokane Public Radio
Most of the public school superintendents in Spokane County are smiling this morning (Wed). It appears all but one of the 15 levies on yesterday’s school election ballot have been approved. It’s a mixed bag, however, for special levies and bond issues.
Spokane Superintendent Brian Benzel was nervous about this election because it was the first school election in the county to be conducted entirely by mail. He expected more votes than usual would be cast and he expected the percentage to be lower than in past elections.
About two minutes after the polls closed, Benzel got a phone call with the good news. The district’s three-year maintenance-and-operations levy had been approved with a 66-percent vote, more than the 60-percent needed to pass.
“The forecast was that it would be in the low sixties. The fact that our community came out in record numbers, because of the new election methodology, and we kept a 66-percent ‘yes’ vote is phenomenal.”
In fact, all of the county’s school levies passed, except for in the West Valley district, and that one still has a chance, it’s only a fraction of a percentage point short, with more ballots trickling in during the next ten days. Strangely, a second levy in the West Valley district, to fund new technology, appears to have passed.
“They’ll have a discussion about this and we’ll just have to see what they say, you know, if they want to turn around and run it again or they wanna take a look at why it’s not passing and where to go from there.”
There were two other technology levies on the ballot, in Freeman, that one’s passing, and in Mead, that’s failing by a narrow margin.
Voters in Cheney easily approved a levy to buy new school buses.
A bond issue for school improvements in the Nine Mile Falls district is narrowly failing.
A school levy in the Colville district in Stevens County also appears to have failed, picking up a little less than 58-percent of the vote.