Voters OK District 56 plan to borrow $28.5 million for new school

Voters gave Gurnee Elementary District 56 a ballot-box victory by allowing $28.5 million to be borrowed mostly for construction of a new school in Wadsworth.

With all 20 precincts counted, unofficial totals Tuesday showed 3,726 favored the district's proposal and 2,158 were against it.

Passage of the measure means flood-prone Gurnee Grade School will be demolished. The school, where a major sandbagging effort last occurred in 2007, is off Kilbourne Road near the Des Plaines River.

Carrie Kocen, of the Citizens for District 56 Schools that promoted a “yes” vote on the proposal, said one key to victory was passage of the measure will not result in a tax hike.

“The school needs to be replaced,” Kocen said. “If the people chose to reject it, the problem would still be there.”

Warren Township resident Shawn Depke, an opponent with Concerned Citizens, said he still considered the “Vote Yes, Still Pay Less” pitch by the proponents to be questionable.

Gurnee Grade School houses children in kindergarten through eighth grade. It'll be replaced by a structure for grades three through five on about 75 acres the district owns in Wadsworth. The school will rise north of Wadsworth and Delany roads, accommodating about 600 pupils.

O'Plaine Elementary School adjacent to Gurnee village hall will be reconfigured to serve kindergarten through eighth grade students. Some of the $28.5 million loan will be used for the O'Plaine work.

Figures show District 56's bond-and-interest fund tax rate for property owners will mostly hold steady, although they will pay off debt for a longer period of time.

Officials say about $15 million in debt will be repaid by 2015. Payments made on that loan will then be used to cover the new debt.

An owner of a $300,000 home this year will pay about $495 toward the district's bond and interest fund. That'll decline to $420 in 2011 and reach $462 in 2016.