GILROY
– A second go-around for a Gilroy school bond charmed voters
Tuesday who gave the $69 million plan to improve public school
facilities their overwhelming blessing.
Measure I, labeled
”
new and improved
”
by supporters, received 62.4 percent voter approval, 7.4
percentage points more than the required 55 percent.
GILROY – A second go-around for a Gilroy school bond charmed voters Tuesday who gave the $69 million plan to improve public school facilities their overwhelming blessing.
Measure I, labeled “new and improved” by supporters, received 62.4 percent voter approval, 7.4 percentage points more than the required 55 percent.
In the March election, a similar bond measure failed by just 146 votes.
“The passage of this bond, along with the incumbents getting the most votes out of all the trustees, is a message from the community that we’re basically headed in the right direction,” said Gilroy Unified School District Superintendent Edwin Diaz, flanked by his wife Delia as they celebrated with other Measure-I supporters in a makeshift campaign headquarters off Chestnut Avenue and 10th Street.
The group’s reaction was a stark contrast to its more reserved tone just a few hours prior, when early election results showed Measure I 4 percentage points shy of the required 55 percent of voter approval. As precinct tallies came in closer to midnight, spontaneous cheers and congratulatory applause replaced the scattered conversations and concerned looks.
“I think the fact that we included Phase One construction of the new high school this time around was a big factor,” Diaz said.
The bond from March – Measure D – only earmarked money to be spent on acquiring land for the new high school campus. Measure I will buy the land and construct general use buildings and classrooms for 900 students.
“The failure of Measure D last March gave us more time to communicate our facilities needs to the community,” Diaz observed. “We asked people at community forums for more input. We were able to get more people to volunteer and get out the vote.”
School board President Jim Rogers was a major part of that “get out the vote” push. The incumbent trustee, who was re-elected to a second term Tuesday, spent the day going precinct to precinct and calling Measure I-supporters who had not yet come in to cast their votes.
“It’s difficult to say you’re against schools or children to campaigners during a campaign, but the moment of truth is when you’re all alone in that polling booth. People only answer to themselves,” Rogers said. “But we felt it was our job to at least get every last one of those potential ‘yes’ votes out to the poles.”
Measure I money will propel the school district’s 25-year master facilities plan which will cost roughly $155 million. The funds raised by Measure I, via increased property taxes, will go toward construction of a new high school and upgrades on a dozen other district campuses.
Based on GUSD estimates, property owners will pay roughly $60 for every $100,000 of assessed property value for the life of the bond over the next 25 years. The average assessed value for Gilroy homes is $240,000, meaning the average property owner would pay $140 a year for the bond.
Diaz and Charlie Van Meter, the GUSD’s facilities director, said planning will begin immediately. Among the first steps, they said, will be sending out applications to various community stakeholder groups seeking representatives that will form an oversight committee.
The oversight committee was called for in the bond measure. It will make sure the district stays on track fiscally in implementing the projects outlined in its master plan.
As far as construction and upgrades are concerned, Van Meter said some projects are already “in the pipeline” and are awaiting approval at the state level. Rebuilding Eliot Elementary School is the first major project scheduled to get under way.
“It’s in bad shape,” said Diaz. “It also needs more capacity to serve the students who now attend there since we switched to a neighborhood schools enrollment system.”
A neighborhood schools system requires, essentially, children to attend the school nearest to where they live.
Van Meter noted that Eliot will become a two-story facility, the first of its kind for Gilroy public schools.
The new high school will be the last major project to get developed under Measure I. Its opening is scheduled for fall 2008. A location has not been selected, but district officials are looking for available acreage on the north end of town, they have said.
“I’m excited, but I’ve got a lot of work to do now,” Van Meter said Tuesday night at Measure I headquarters. “It’s going to be a busy six years.”
Measure-I supporters, formally called Better Schools for Gilroy Children, will also be busy the next two and a half months. That’s the amount of time they have to gather up the $65,000 they own Tramutola Public Mobilization, the Oakland-based consulting firm that ran the Measure I campaign. If Measure I failed to garner the required 55 percent voter approval, Better Schools for Gilroy Children would have owed the firm nothing.
Better Schools for Gilroy Children raised over $40,000 to run its campaign and has the first of its payments to Tramutola ready to send out, said GUSD trustee and Better Schools co-chair Bob Kraemer. Now the group must go back out to community members and businesses and for additional support, he said.
“People are usually reluctant to put money behind a losing cause,” Kraemer said. “In the last month, our fund-raising efforts really picked up momentum and now we just need to carry that through some more.”
At least one of the largest financial backers for Measure I – George K. Baum & Company (GKB) – will benefit financially by its victory. GKB, which donated $5,000, is the Denver-based investment banking firm that will now underwrite the bonds. Better Schools has stressed that GKB was hired on as the underwriter before they were approached for a donation.
Also with the potential for a heftier pocketbook is H.A. Ekelin & Associates, the Salinas-based building contractors who are currently constructing the district’s new middle school, Ascencion Solorsano.
The company donated $7,500 to Better Schools even though they have not signed on to do any work under Measure I.
