Almond Road campus expansion to go to voters

Warren Township High School will seek voter permission to borrow $30 million primarily to fund an expansion of the Almond Road upperclassmen campus.

By a 6-0 vote Tuesday, board members at Gurnee-based Warren High School District 121 agreed to place the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot.

An owner of a home with a market value of $300,000 pays $279 annually to Warren for reducing its bond and interest debt. The tax rate for the bond and interest debt will drop in some fashion in 2009.

If the ballot proposition is approved, the owner of the $300,000 home would find a reduction of roughly $87 on the 2009 property tax bill. The bill for the bond and interest debt would be about $192.

But if the measure is defeated, the property tax bill on the $300,000 home would decline by about $143 in 2009. The bond and interest debt bill would be roughly $136.

Warren board President John Anderson said there is no question the Almond Road campus for juniors and seniors is out of room. He said much study went into reaching that conclusion, including the hiring of an independent consultant specializing in school facility assessments and capacity analysis. "This expansion isn't something we just dreamed up in the last six months," Anderson said.

Warren board member Richard Conley, who fought previous District 121 money requests as a local tax watchdog, was on an out-of-town vacation and didn't vote Tuesday.

Plans call for an additional 14 classrooms, expansion of the cafeteria into the Black Box Theater, office renovations, more physical education space and a new fine-arts facility built onto the Almond Road building.

About 2,200 students would be accommodated with an Almond campus expansion. Six-day enrollment is at 1,901 in a building that school facility consultant DeJong Inc. of Dublin, Ohio, estimates has a functional building capacity of 1,800 pupils.