The 2024 February General Election is still six months away, but the nature of the Hoquiam School District’s bond proposal for that ballot will be decided in the next several weeks.

The Hoquiam School Board will vote either at its next regular meeting or a following special meeting whether or not to approve a bond package for capital projects prepared by a committee of community members, staff and district officials over the course of the last six weeks.

“These six weeks have been a tremendous effort by everybody in this room,” said Jeff Feeney, director of education management with KMB architects, at the committee’s final meeting on Wednesday. The district hired KMB to help facilitate bond planning.

Much of the bond will address the district’s current conundrum: aging buildings and not enough students to fill them. The 27-member committee was tasked with prioritizing projects and coming up with a proposal likely to gain support of the community.

At its final meeting Aug. 9, the committee voted to propose a $42 million bond that will help fund major modernizations to three of its schools, including a nearly $50 million to Hoquiam High School, $6.3 million to Hoquiam Middle School and $2.8 million to Emerson Elementary.

Improvements around the district include roof replacements, new HVAC systems, sprinkler systems and other upgrades. Hoquiam facilities coordinator Matt Kemph said the proposed $50 million in work at the high school, which was built in 1966, includes “modernizations to existing buildings bringing them up to ADA standards, security standards and the best educational value for the kids,” plus fire suppression and fire sprinklers.

The modernizations will also include a shutdown — or “mothballing” — of the current high school library, which school board chair Chris Eide described as “putting this building on hold for a while for future possibilities,” while the library will be moved to the “A” building on the high school campus.

The school board voted in May to close the 37,000-square-foot Central Elementary School, which won’t happen until 2025 at the earliest and is not contingent on the passing of the bond.

District buildings currently span a little more than 300,000 square feet, and only enough students to fill about 175,000 square feet. The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction allocates monthly funding to school districts, called apportionment, based on how many students are enrolled. Apportionment funding goes to many different aspects of the district, but includes money for general maintenance, counselors and teachers.

Since 2004, district enrollment has declined by 25%. Hoquiam High School has enrolled fewer than half of the students the school was designed for, prompting the bond committee decision to transition 7th and 8th graders to the high school facilities.

The bond committee approved a total project cost of about $61 million, one-third of which will come from supplementing funds from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, not directly from Hoquiam School District taxpayers. But that’s contingent on voters approving the bond next February.

By law, school district bond measures are capped at 5% of the total assessed property value in the district. Hoquiam’s bond capacity is about $53 million — about $11 million greater than the bond amount proposed by the committee.

“There’s no doubt, throughout all these meetings, that we’ve kept the taxpayer in mind,” Eide said.

The exact burden for taxpayers also won’t be nailed down until the district consults with an investment banking firm, said Keith Ounsted, business manager for Hoquiam School District. For the district’s current bond, which will expire at the end of 2024, taxpayers in the Hoquiam school district pay $1.25 per $1,000 of assessed value. At Wednesday’s meeting, Ounsted estimated a $40 million dollar bond would cost taxpayers somewhere in the range of $2.30 per $1,000 of assessed value. For a house with an assessed value of $200,000, that’s about $460 dollars per year.

Feeney said total project costs estimates are likely to change slightly before coming to the board once prices and figures are shored up. He added the full breakdown of the proposed bond measure will be presented to the public thoroughly once the board approves it.

“Between now and when this goes out to vote, there will be a lot of information provided to the community,” Feeney said.

The Hoquiam school board will meet on Thursday, Aug. 17 at 5:30 p.m. in the Hoquiam High School library. Any dates for special meetings to follow have not been determined.

Contact reporter Clayton Franke at 406-552-3917 or clayton.franke@thedailyworld.com.