MARQUETTE, MI— The Marquette Area Public Schools district is offering voters a $59.995 million bond proposal on the May ballot.
MAPS Superintendent Zack Sedgwick says the district encompasses more than 750,000 square feet of buildings. Separate studies conducted by the district and the state both indicated MAPS had over $100 million in infrastructure needs. The average building age is 60 years, while the newest buildings are 30 years old.
“The bones are good but the systems are outdated, and we knew we weren’t going to be able to sustain the facilities, the infrastructure, with our current funding,” he says.
Last year MAPS sent residents a survey containing six funding options to address the district’s three main pillars of safety, infrastructure, and programming. Input from listening sessions and town halls led officials to choose the $59 million proposal, which is still around $40 million short of what the district needs.
Sedgwick says bond is being proposed in two 14-year phases, and officials structured it in a way that would allow for potential refinancing after ten years.
“Hopefully with interest rates potentially declining and property values hopefully increasing, we’ll be able to pay down that principal quickly enough that in ten years, again, we’ll be able to go back to the voters for a no-mill increase recapture to finance some of the additional projects that aren’t getting addressed in this proposal.”
The bond’s estimated tax impact would be 1.55 mills.
Sedgwick says the proposal touches every building and every student.
