Bonneville School Districts revises bond, drops the $25 million bond measure

Part of the $60 million bond the Bonneville School District was ready to put on the March ballot has been dropped. The part dropped was the issue for a new elementary school, which was $25 million of the total.

A legal concern is the reason for the revision. The board’s bond attorney went to last week’s school board meeting and said the bond had the issue of what’s known as “log rolling.”

“It was forcing voters to approve two unrelated propositions. Our bond had two different questions on the ballot that were unrelated — one was for a junior high, one was for an elementary. We had put a contingency… you had to vote for the junior high in order to approve the elementary, which was the second question. So it fell into the category of log rolling,” said Amy Landers, the vice chair of the board of trustees.

The revision the board came up with was to drop one of the questions out of the bond. The $35 million bond for a new middle school with additional upgrades is still in play, but is now the only question that will be on the ballot. Paperwork is already filed with Bonneville County to revise the bond language.

“For myself, I was very surprised that there was a legal issue. We never knew that until we got into that meeting and it was a very big shock. I think it’s fair to say that all of the board members believe that we need both of those schools and it would be nice to have them now. They’re very much needed. We are very overcrowded. And we just had to make a decision, and that’s the decision we came to,” Landers said.

The revised bond will also take care of a new roof at Iona Elementary School, a parent dropoff loop at Falls Valley Elementary School and money for design upgrades. There is no levy increase. Landers says they will revisit creating a new bond for a new elementary school in the future.