Coldwater to consider smaller levy

COLDWATER - Coldwater voters will likely see a new tax levy for Coldwater Schools on the Nov. 5 ballot.

At a special meeting on Tuesday, school board members unanimously voted to forward the levy language to the Mercer County Board of Elections.

School board members are pursuing a scaled-backed income tax levy at the Nov. 5 general election after their first proposal was resoundingly defeated in March.

The levy would bump up the existing 0.5% traditional income tax to 1%.

The levy proposal that was shot down by 71% of voters at the March 19 primary election would have replaced the 0.5% traditional income tax with a 1.75% earned income tax, applying only to employee compensation and net earnings from self-employment.

The 0.5% traditional income tax levy was first passed by voters in 1999 and currently generates about $1 million annually, according to district treasurer Jenn McCoy.

If passed, the increased tax would raise an additional $1,304,674 for current expense purposes, McCoy said.

School board members believe additional revenue is necessary to help keep the district on track financially, board member Jack Waite said at a public forum in May.

"We're stable, we're happy to be stable, but we do need additional revenue to be able to tackle these challenges that we have in the not-too-distant future," he had said. "We decided to put another one out in November. We're teachable. It's not going to be an earned income tax."

In addition to a number of priorities that are either financed by grants, donations or existing school funds, the district has a laundry list of capital improvements to make which officials have dubbed "unfunded priorities."

A public tour held last month by school board members featured "about 3%" of the school's unfunded priorities, said superintendent Doug Mader, who pointed to worn-out middle school carpet, cracked bricks on the school exterior, aging gymnasiums, old windows sealed shut due to leaks, a near-obsolete fleet of school vehicles and other areas that need addressed.

The district passed a 2.5-mill continuous permanent improvement (PI) levy in 2021. Those funds are currently being used for updates to the school's HVAC controls in classrooms. The work is estimated at $1.3 million.

"We have four phases (in the HVAC controller project)," Mader said during last month's infrastructure tour. "This is our second phase. Those are the units that are going bad and that controls everything inside this room. We did the middle school last year. We were supposed to do the high school at Christmas. We didn't have any money left in our PI fund."