The Prescott School Board committed at its meeting last Wednesday to holding a referendum vote on Feb. 15, 2022 to tackle capital projects necessary at several schools that won’t fit in annual budgets.

Setting the date out 13 months gives the district time to plan for what those projects will be exactly. Last month, the district looked at large-scale projects like replacing roofs and infrastructure needs at schools.

The district had a facility study done in 2019 that identified building structural and equipment needs, as well as projects that could be done to make buildings more safe and to better meet today’s education needs for some of the older buildings. District residents were surveyed this past October and were cool to a referendum vote for some of those projects.

Last month, the board received a presentation on necessary building maintenance – including those roofing projects – that will be needed to be done in coming years, as well as HVAC and plumbing projects and building safety needs.

With the unanimous board vote to target the February 2022 vote, the administration will work with the board to put together a plan in coming months of what projects the referendum would pay for. Setting the referendum that far out gives the district plenty of time to engage the community in the district needs.

Superintendent Dr. Rick Spicuzza presented to the board that from 2004-2016, 18 referendum questions were asked of the Prescott community, as the district struggled with a space crunch and needed to ask voters to exceed the state levy cap. Voters OK’d the construction of the new high school and auditorium in 2014.

Spicuzza said from the district survey, it was evident,”We should focus on the essential needs.”

“Since 2016, the school board has not gone to the voters to ask for finances,” Spicuzza said. “The last time you asked the community to invest in Malone Elementary and the Intermediate School was in 1994 and 2004. We are approaching 20 and 30 years since the community has been asked to invest in infrastructure that has limits in how long they’ll function, our boilers, our roofs are coming of age. We now have rooms and schools where we do have water infiltration.”

“You have the number. You know it definitely exceeds an annual budget. There is a point in time where we’ll have to ask the community to support the investment in our facilities,” said Spicuzza.

The vote could have been held as soon as this April, but the board wants time to get the community involved in the process.

“We’ve been talking about this for quite some time,” said board member Tanya Holub. “I believe we absolutely need to go to referendum.”

Other board members concurred.

“I agree with the Feb. 15 date, this gives us time to work with the community. We know the sentiment. We did the survey so we could understand where the community is sitting,” said Steve Sizemore. “We need to have community involvement in the planning. It may just be a roof, but people out there want to have a say. We need to involve the community, and that should give us time to do that. We do have needs that have to be addressed.”

Vicki Rudolph said that in the COVID-19 environment, the district hasn’t been able to reach out to the community like it would need to.

“This gives us enough time to get out to everybody,” she said.

“I’m absolutely in line with the rest of the board,” said President Mike Matzek. “It sends a message to the public that we are coming for an undisclosed dollar amount at this point. It gives us a year to prepare for it.

“I’m excited to talk about the next steps and what we can do to sharpen the pence and who we can work with on what the ask will be. This is what we kind of envisioned over the last couple months when we had some tough discussions on the board of what our job will be.”

Photo by John McLoone.