Credit Courtesy of Kootenai County Fire District
Bond issues and school levies in Kootenai and Bonner counties were winning after early vote counts on Tuesday.
In Kootenai County, 78% of voters said yes [as of Tuesday, 10:30 pm] to a measure that would allow the county fire district to expand to accommodate growth in the county, says Fire Chief Christopher Way.
“They understand the challenges we’re facing, that we’re no longer the same fire district that we were 10 or 20 years ago. We haven’t built a new fire station since 1999. Everybody clearly understands our community is nothing like it was in 1999, he said.
Credit Courtesy of Kootenai County Fire District
School levies in Kootenai and Bonner counties were winning after final vote counts on Tuesday.
In the case of the two school levies, what a difference two months makes.
In March, the Post Falls school levy fell just short of a majority. On Tuesday, it won almost 53% of the vote.
The two-year property tax measure would collect nearly $5 million from voters each of the next two years to supplement state education funding. District officials say the levy would provide about seven-and-a-half percent of their budget.
In the West Bonner County School District, based in Priest River, the second-chance levy had collected nearly 52% of the vote, up from about 46% in March. The levy will raise about $3.4 million from taxpayers each of the next two years. District officials say the rate will stay the same as it has been during the current levy that expires at the end of June.
SPR s Doug Nadvornick reports.
Voters in north Idaho approved most of the school levies on Tuesday’s ballot, a few by narrow margins.
Two have apparently fallen short. The West Bonner County School District measure has about 46% approval. The Post Falls levy is 33 votes behind out of 2,900 ballots cast.
There are also tight margins in the Boundary County and Lakeland School Districts, but with the opposite result.
In Post Falls, Superintendent Dena Naccarato issued a statement expressing disappointment with such a close loss. The school district has enjoyed overwhelming community support for many years, and we wonder if some of our supporters took the success for granted and did not get to the polls. The levy is fundamental not supplemental, so we owe it to our students to try again in May, she wrote. The money is used to maintain student instructional and extracurricular programming. In addition, we need to remain competitive with our surrounding school districts if we