Oktibbeha County Circuit Clerk Glenn Hamilton said his office verified enough petition signatures to force a proposed $13.2 million Oktibbeha County School District bond to an election this year, but the school system’s conservator is not expected to take action until next week.
OCSD’s next meeting is scheduled for noon Feb. 2 at the county education building.
Almost 1,900 signatures from qualified OCSD petitioners were verified during certification efforts this week, Hamilton said, and workers rejected about 650 others.
Only signatures from qualified electors who reside within OCSD’s territory, not Starkville School District’s area that extends outside city limits, were counted.
The circuit clerk’s work discovered some irregularities with the petition — for example, signatures for numerous people residing at individual residences appeared to originate from the same author and Webster County residents signed the documents — which led to numerous disqualifications.
“We’re going to err on the side of caution,” Hamilton said in regard to the irregularities. “When you’re certifying something, it leaves no room for error. We’re taking our time to make sure things are accurate.”
Workers will continue vetting the remaining 100 or so signatures today, but petition organizers clearly eclipsed the almost 1,500 names needed to force the proposed bond to the polls.
The work is expected to conclude sometime this week but definitely before Monday’s OCSD meeting.
Hamilton’s office was tasked with vetting the names Monday after county school officials delivered the documents. A busy courthouse — circuit court’s term started that same day — and a lack of internal infrastructure slowed the process, he said.
A late-December legal notice for OCSD’s proposed bonds sparked the petition process after organizers complained about its timing, saying it was issued at the 11th hour when people were not paying attention to current events.
Some also alluded to not knowing how the money would be used. However, the bond’s issuance and its primary financial goal — construction of a demonstration school — were known since late 2013.
First, the Commission on Starkville Consolidated School District Structure — the study group created by the Legislature and charged with pitching successful merger ideas — openly discussed the needs for new construction and renovations to existing facilities after lawmakers approved consolidation in 2013.
Senate Bill 2818, the Legislature’s 2014 answer to the group’s requests and overall plan, authorized Pulley to increase OCSD’s bonding capacity to its 3-mill limit — she did last year — for campus improvements and tasked her with issuing the reverse referendum to acquire local funding for construction costs.
If the district is able to raise the funds, it will pledge approximately $10 million toward the construction of a demonstration school located on Mississippi State University’s campus. All grades 6-7 Oktibbeha County schoolchildren would attend the new school under the consolidation plan.
MSU previously announced it would donate $5 million and almost 43 acres of land for the new school. Even with that donation, the plan still requires $10 million from local sources and $10 million from the Legislature.
The remainder of the local bond issuance would go toward the purchase of technology — laptops and SMARTboards for teachers and students primarily within the former county district — and buses to improve the consolidated district’s internal infrastructure.
A bond referendum would require 60 percent of the vote for passage. Historically, county residents have not supported significant debt issuances for school improvements.
Without the new campus, school officials say the consolidated system could experience higher student-teacher ratios since two OCSD campuses will close after the districts merge.
Last week, Parents for Public School Starkville and the Greater Starkville Development Partnership began an education campaign to highlight the bond’s importance.
The joint effort began after the GSDP’s board of directors — a broad swath of business leaders within the community — unanimously passed resolutions supporting the effort, its associated publicity costs and the creation of a petition for those original signatories who now want to remove their names from the document.
A copy of the counter-petition is published, along with various consolidation fact sheets, on PPS Starkville’s website, PPSStarkville.org.
“The bottom line is that not many people understood that this local funding is the only way to achieve (construction of a demonstration school) that all county schoolchildren will attend. Nobody in Oktibbeha County requested this (consolidation and subsequent tax increase). The Legislature mandated. We’re trying to make the best of the situation,” said PPS Starkville President Michelle Jones last week. “I’m afraid county residents weren’t told there was going to be an equalization of taxes (between both OCSD’s area and SSD’s territory) at the time of consolidation. We do want to stop the ‘us-and-them’ division, and equalization is part of that.”
SSD officials estimate the $13.2 million bond, if passed, would increase taxes on a $100,000 home by about $14 per month.
Out of SSD’s 66.57-mill tax rate, 14.11 mills are used to retire debt; OCSD utilizes 3 mills out of its overall 59-mill rate for debt retirement.
Once the two districts merge, it is believed former OCSD residents’ school tax rate will decease about 4 mills due to the assessed value of a mill increasing with SSD’s higher property values.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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