Mayor will knock on Gurnee doors for school
Gurnee Mayor Kristina Kovarik soon may be knocking on your door to seek support for a local school district's effort to borrow $28.5 million.
Kovarik and village trustees this week reiterated their support of Gurnee Elementary District 56's proposal to obtain the loan, which would primarily be used to build a new school in Wadsworth.
Voters on Nov. 2 will decide whether to grant District 56 permission to borrow the $28.5 million. The district would depart flood-prone Gurnee Grade School on Kilbourne Road near the Des Plaines River.
Kovarik said support for the ballot initiative from her and the village trustees should carry weight with residents. She said the elected officials are more familiar with government accounting and borrowing through bond issues.
"I know I'll help go door-to-door, coffees, whatever," Kovarik said at Monday's village board session. "I think some of the trustees will help. In the end, the (proposal) is a win-win for the village."
District 56 board members earlier this month voted 7-0 in favor of placing the borrowing question on the Nov. 2 ballot. District 56 would demolish Gurnee Grade School if the new structure is built.
Figures show District 56's bond-and-interest fund tax rate for property owners would mostly hold steady if voters approved the $28.5 million budgeted for the Wadsworth school. However, they'd be paying off debt for a longer period of time.
Officials say about $15 million in debt would be repaid by 2015. Payments made on that loan would then be used to cover the payments on the new loan.
An owner of a $300,000 market value home this year will pay about $495 toward the district's bond and interest fund. That would decline to $420 in 2012 and reach $462 in 2016 if the ballot measure is approved.
If the referendum question is rejected, the $300,000 homeowner would pay $525 to the bond and interest fund in 2012. However, the payment would slide to about $207 in 2016.
Gurnee Grade School houses children in kindergarten through eighth grade. Replacing it would be a structure for grades three through five on about 75 acres the district owns in Wadsworth. The school would rise north of Wadsworth and Delany roads, accommodating about 600 pupils.
O'Plaine Elementary School adjacent to Gurnee village hall would be reconfigured to serve kindergarten through eighth grade. Some of the $28.5 million loan would be used for the O'Plaine work.
District 56 includes sections of Gurnee east of the Tri-State Tollway, Wadsworth, Beach Park and Waukegan. District enrollment was pegged at 2,234 for the last academic year.