Terri Holden, the Yellow Springs schools superintendent, said she believed the cost of the school was reasonable.
“If you look at any schools built in the last, I don’t know, 10 years, it’s in line with all of that,” she said.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
The Community Advisory Team, which was made up of people from the community to give input on what the schools should do, recommended in May that the schools build a new middle school/high school campus on East Enon Road, which is currently the site of the middle school/high school. That cost would be $35.5 million.
The school district has argued for a long time that their current building does not meet their needs. Yellow Springs is working with the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission to get funding needed for the building.
The OFCC will pay for about 26%, or about $9 million, of the project further down the line, which will go to pay off the debt of building the school.
However, Yellow Springs would still have to pay for most of the cost of building a new building.
For a property value of $100,000 in the village, that means an increase of property tax annually of about $228, according to the school district.
“I want to make sure that people view this as affordable,” said Tammy Emrick, the Yellow Springs Schools treasurer.
Emrick said the school could have used more taxation in property values but said spreading into an income tax made it more fair for people who might have bought their homes a long time ago. The homes may have appreciated in value since buying the home, while their income did not rise at the same rate.
In 2018, Yellow Springs voters rejected a 4.5 mil levy that would have generated about $18.5 million for new school construction and renovation.
For more information on the project, visit https://ysforward.com/
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