Voters back to polls over another West Salem School District referendum

West Salem School District voters are going back to the ballot box for another referendum.

It’s a sentence they’ve heard quite a bit lately.

This time it’s an operational referendum to give the district permission to exceed its revenue limit by $7.63 million over four years.

Superintendent Troy Gunderson says they’ve cut all they can.

“We’ve avoided getting out there and asking that question by cost shifting and reducing the programming or benefits of our employees,” Gunderson said. “With the expansion of our campus and growth of students that’s bringing, we can’t keep up with it so we need permission to do that.”

The projected mill rate for voters is expected to rise from the current $8.93 to around $9.74 per $1,000 dollars of property value, if the voters pass the operational referendum in November.

Gunderson says West Salem was hurt by the revenue limit and enrollment being stagnant.

Voters just passed a building referendum this past February and Gunderson admits voters might be sick of it by now.

“We knew, as we look five years ahead, we’re going to have to solve our building issues and eventually we’re going to have to solve our revenue cap issues,” he said. “One of the concerns was, if you did the buildings first, that people might be tired of voting by then and then you’re budget would be in jeopardy.”

Gunderson added that failure would mean tough choices over the next couple of years.

“We’ll have to reduce by about $1 million to get our budget back in line with our revenues,” he said. “And, that’ll be a difficult budget process, as we figure out if we’ll increase class sizes or reduce programming or stop doing the things that we’re doing.”

Gunderson says the board will discuss Monday on how information will be given to voters.