By CASSANDRA SHOFAR Staff Writer

MEDINA TWP. — It looks as though the Medina City School District must tighten its financial belt.

An additional continuous 6.9-mill operating levy on Tuesday’s ballot, which would have generated about $8.75 million annually and cost homeowners $211.31 a year per $100,000 appraised valuation, failed by 5,584 votes, with 4,469 for the levy and 10,053 against, according to the unofficial results from the Medina County Board of Elections.

“(The failed levy) forces us to reassess our expenditures, our future hires … and forces us to re-evaluate the entire district as we start the new year. We’ll have to be cautious on how to proceed,” Superintendent Randy Stepp said Tuesday night. “I don’t think we can move forward with confidence until we have the levy under our belts.”

Medina school board members and Superintendent Randy Stepp (left) watch election results scroll across a projection screen in the Distance Learning Lab at Medina High School on Tuesday. As their expressions indicate, the levy failed 10,053 votes to 4,469. (Andrew Dolph | Staff Photographer)

---

The mood in Medina High School’s Distance Learning Lab was melancholy, as a few board members and Stepp watched the results on the lab’s large projection screen.

“I’d be very interested in hearing from people why they voted no,” said Tom Ebner, president of the school board. “I thought we had a good plan. It addressed a lot of the needs and it was a reasonable levy … however, the district doesn’t seem to have thought so.”

The levy was put on the ballot for the purpose of paying for current operating expenses as well as operating costs for the two new elementary schools scheduled to be built in the next one to two years.

The sales tax, passed by voters in May 2007, will fund the building of the two schools, which will be located at the corner of state routes 162 and 3 in Montville Township and on the south side of East Reagan Parkway in the city.

However, because the sales tax revenue only can be used for capital purchases and since the school district is a high-growth district and inflation growth in revenues is lacking, the operating levy was needed, Stepp has said.

But voters did not agree Tuesday, and now school officials will need to figure out how to cut more corners and tighten up where they can.

“This levy was to keep us where we were and if that’s not there, we’ll nave to do some cutting,” Ebner said.

Stepp added the district will have to evaluate the results, look at the margin, talk to the community to find out what the biggest concerns are and then try to address those.

“Our plan has to be to survey the community and find out what the issues are,” Stepp said. “I think one of the major issues is the economy. Unfortunately, I think we may be a victim of that.”

The board already committed to allowing the district’s permanent improvement levy — a 0.3-mill levy generating $597,876 a year and costing homeowners $9.21 per $100,000 of appraised valuation — to expire in 2011.

However, with the levy failing, the board is unsure what it will do with a 1-mill property tax scheduled to drop off in 2009, Ebner said.

He added the board has to put some kind of operating levy on the August ballot but said members are unsure what it’s going to be.

“We’ve done so much more with less in the district for some time,” board member Susan Vlcek said. “I feel people just don’t comprehend (that).”

She added: “We really want to know why people didn’t support what we thought was a fiscally responsible plan.”

Shofar may be reached at 330-721-4044 or cshofar@ohio.net.