Hartley, Iowa — Voters in the Hartley-Melvin-Sanborn Community School District once again turned down a request by the School District for a $16.5-million bond issue for construction of school facilities.
The bond issue would have financed the construction of a new elementary school, which would have been attached to the current high school in Hartley, with a separate entrance and a new playground, as well as an addition to, and renovation of, the middle school in Sanborn.
Tuesday’s defeat marks the third unsuccessful attempt to pass such a bond issue.
The vote totals this time around found 904 yes votes, and 614 no votes. A 60-percent approval vote is required for a bond issue to pass, and Tuesday’s vote total found the measure falling short by just 7 votes.. O’Brien County Auditor Barb Rohwer says these numbers include the absentee ballots that her office had received as of Wednesday morning. Rohwer tells KIWA that there are still 9 outstanding absentee ballots. If all 9 of the outstanding absentee ballots came back as yes votes, Rohwer says the measure would still fail, since the additional 9 votes would bring the total number of votes cast to 1527, 60-percent of which is 916, leaving the approval still 3 votes shy of passage.
These, of course, are unofficial vote totals. The vote doesn’t become official until canvassed by the O’Brien County Board of Supervisors. That will happen at their next meeting, which, according to Rowher, is scheduled for this coming Tuesday, April 11th.
Original story posted at 9:18 pm, April 4, 2017
HMS School District, Iowa — While it got a higher percentage of the vote than it has in the past, the Hartley-Melvin Sanborn bond issue has been defeated for a third time.
Being a bond issue, the measure needed a sixty percent super majority to pass. The unofficial results are that the measure receieved only 59.55 percent of the vote, falling short by less than half a percent. The totals were 904 YES, and 614 NO. Turnout was 1518 of a possible 3161 registered voters in the district, according to the auditor’s office. That’s a turnout of about 48 percent.
Ryan Haack also ran unopposed for a school board position and received 98 percent of the vote.
