MARION SCHOOL OFFICIALS PURSUING NEW PLAN

Campus improvements costing estimated $4.2M would use existing tax levy

School officials in Marion are looking more closely at a Plan B that would use the existing tax levy to update some of the areas on the district’s outdated campus, the oldest part of which is 110 years old.

Superintendent Brian Brosnahan told The Courier Tuesday morning — the morning following the regular school board meeting Monday, Sept. 16 — that several options within the existing footprint are on the table.

That includes some minor work that could begin this fall, but most of it will have to be designed by CO-OP Architecture, approved by the school board and bid, with the bulk of the improvements coming after the 2024-25 school year has concluded.

Brosnahan said that will likely include classroom renovations, a replacement of flooring, walls and doors, window work, tuck pointing, an update to the main entrance that faces the west, a renovation of the current locker rooms to better utilize the existing space, and improved heating and cooling to better regulate temperatures.

He said that the original building still in use — the three-story structure built in 1914 — “will not receive a lot of love, because eventually we’d like to see that go away.”

The school board will be looking at different updates inside the current footprint we have right now.

“There’s going to be some pieces of it that will possibly be started yet this fall, but the scope of the work from the design phase (with CO-OP Architecture) will start right after school gets out,” Brosnahan said.

The superintendent said the updates are expected to cost $4.2 million and go out for bid by late January. Of that $4.2 million, he said, the district would use $1 million out of its existing capital outlay fund. The remaining $3.2 million would come from capital outlay certificates — essentially a loan against future taxation using the existing levies that is paid back over a period up to 20 years.

Brosnahan said it’s likely the district will use its cash on hand to fund the smaller and more immediate elements of the improvement, with the capital outlay certificates accounting for the major work next summer.

This follows two general obligation bond resolutions that would have raised taxes to help fund a much extensive renovation to be done in three phases and costing an estimated $14 million.

The first came in January when voters rejected a 6.5 million bond; while it received a majority in the affirmative — 51.15% — it failed to reach the 60% required by state law.

The second bond issue, this time in the amount of $6 million was rejected in June, this time not even reaching a simple majority.

Following the second rejection, school officials agreed that the public had spoken.

“The mood on the board is like, ‘OK, this didn’t work, so let’s move on and do what we can with what we have,’” Scott Tieszen, president of the school board, told The Courier in June. “We’re still looking at all the components of Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3, but they won’t be done as they were listed out. We might pick this thing, pick that thing and pick this thing based on what we have found is priority and what can give us the most benefit.”