By Julia Caulfield
On Mondays in the run-up to the November Election, KOTO News will be covering this year’s Ballot initiatives. This week, we have a profile of Ballot Measure 5B, a bond measure from the Norwood School District asking voters to approve a $10.2 million bond measure to address critical infrastructure needs.
“We have buildings that were built in 1958, 1968, 1997. Specifically, the ’68 and ’58 buildings are really starting to fall around us,” says Todd Bittner, Superintendent of the Norwood School District.
“This bond is about the future. The long-term continued future for the Norwood Public Schools. We know this is a large ask for our community, but it’s an essential ask,” Bittner says.
Bittner notes the current building is getting past the point of repair.
“We’ve had water coming through our ceilings. We’ve got walls pulling off of the main structure and the repairs are no longer fixing the issues,” he adds, “So when spring comes, and I have water tumbling down in my hallways, I have grave concerns about how long that process can last. They’ve done repair after repair after repair, and at some point you kind of have to just bite the bullet and do it. And that’s what we’re doing.
The bond will go towards building a whole new school for the district.
“That would mean that we would put a prekindergarten through 12th grade school, all in one location, located at the end of Market Street in Norwood. We would change our location, and look for local community partners to take advantage of our current property, and really move the community forward,” Bittner says.
According to Bittner, the $10.2 million is only a portion of what it will take to actually build the new school, for the rest, the district is looking to the state.
“We’ve applied for a BEST grant. They’ve asked us to meet our bonding capacity. Our bonding capacity for Norwood as of January 2023 was $10.2 million, we asked for a total project of around $69 million. They agreed if we could come up with $10 million, they would give us $59 million,” notes Bittner “We feel very strongly, based upon our scoring from BEST, that, if we can get our bond passed, go back to BEST in January and say ‘listen, our community has made this commitment’.”
If the Norwood School District does not get the BEST grant from the state, the bond measure will not go into effect.
When it comes to cost for the taxpayer, Bittner notes the increase will depend on whether a property is commercial, private, or agriculture.
“For a corporate or commercial property it’s about $378 per $100,000 for their commercial property,” Bittner says.
For agriculture it gets more complicated.
According to Bittner “depending on the type of property that you have, will determine how much your property tax is going to be. It gets really complicated because, is it irrigated? Is it dry land? What’s the quality of the dry land? What’s the quality of the irrigated land? All those things go into categories, classes, and subclasses.”
While he’s spent his career in education, Bittner says the goal of the new building is about more than the classes that take place in it.
“In a small rural community the school is the hub. There is no larger meeting space. There is no other place our community can meet indoors. They should have a safe place for them to be,” Bittner emphasizes “So for us, that’s why we’ve laid and established this plan, to make sure there’s longevity. When you put a new building in, a new building is built to last 50 to 75 years. I think the folks new that in 1968 when they put our building in. It just happens to be our time.”
Ballot Issue 5B comes before Norwood voters in the November 7th election. This story is part of KOTO’s election coverage. Find an archive of all our election coverage at koto.org/2023-election-coverage.