By Shawn Hogendorf, Correspondent 

The Prior Lake-Savage Area School Board heard Monday that there is a good base of support for renewing the district’s operating levy next year, but community support isn’t there for a bond to build a new wing at the high school.

Don Lifto, senior vice president and director of public education for Springsted Inc., a St. Paul-based company that conducts surveys for school districts, cities, counties and nonprofits, presented the results of a referendum survey, which was conducted April 19-23.

Springsted Inc. works with The Center for Community Opinion, a California-based company that worked with the district to craft the questions and make the phone calls.

“We do not recommend that a bond and levy be placed on the same ballot,” Lifto said. “We do recommend that a single proposal be placed on the ballot to renew and increase the levy by no more than $109 per year for a home with an assessed value of $300,000.”

According to the survey, a proposal to renew and increase the levy along with a proposed bond to expand the high school would fail to win majority support.

“Only a proposal to simply renew the levy achieves support from more than 50 percent,” Lifto said as a result of the analysis derived from the series or questions asked in the survey.

Although the board received results of the survey, no action was taken.

The School Board is planning to have a discussion about the referendum recommendations at a June 2 workshop. Then on June 9, the board will hear recommendations from the Growth Task Force at a regularly scheduled meeting. On June 23, the board is expected to act on the referendum proposal to present to voters in the fall.

Levy recommendation

The survey was conducted in a three-part process.

First, interviewees were asked their opinion with a general question about the upcoming referendum.

The survey found if nothing about the existing levy was changed, 59 percent of those surveyed would favor renewal, with 11 percent undecided. But when asked about a proposal to renew and increase the levy, support dropped to 43 percent, with 9.5 percent undecided.

Then, the interviewees were given basic information, background, benefits and consequences related to renewal and a proposed increase. After receiving this information, the interviewees were asked if their opinions changed.

With the information, support rose to 51 percent, with 6 percent undecided, when respondents were asked if they would support a proposal to renew and increase the district’s operating levy in order to avoid severe budget cuts, reduce class sizes, open Redtail Ridge Elementary and restore some of the cuts made in the budget over the last three years.

When informed that if the levy is not renewed, the district would be forced to eliminate 100 teaching positions, the levy garnered the support of 64 percent of survey participants. When told that a proposed levy with an increase would be used to reduce class sizes, 62 percent supported the renewal and increase.

The third part of the survey put things in the context of tax cost, giving the School Board an idea of the community’s tax tolerance and how much people are willing to invest in schools.

“The fact that there is a significant difference in the reaction to tax rates when presented in terms of assessed value, as compared to the impact on the average homeowner, indicates that voters do not have a good sense of how the value of their home relates to the average home in the district,” Lifto said. “A campaign in support of a levy increase will need to make sure that voters understand how an increase will impact them. Don’t stray too far north of an increase of $109 per year for a home with an assessed value of $300,000.”

Bond recommendation

The survey did not recommend the board propose a bond referendum in November, due to a weak base of support.

The initial support for a bond to build a new wing at the high school was 39 percent, with 53 percent of the interviewees willing to state they’re opposed to such a bond.

The second step was to tell the interviewees that that the high school capacity will become “severely overcrowded if a wing is not built,” and the proposal may ask for a tax increase of $62 per $300,000 assessed home value. After receiving the information about the amount of tax increases and high school overcrowding, the support for the bond increased from 39 percent to 48 percent.

Other recommendations

Along with making recommendations on the upcoming referendum, the survey also provided the district with information regarding why the last referendums failed, what could be done to improve the district’s proposals and what forms of communication the interviewees used get their information.

The survey showed that 38 percent of the people surveyed opposed both referendums last November, 32 percent supported both referendums, 15.5 percent favored one and opposed the other, 11 percent didn’t remember how they voted and 3.5 percent refused to say how they voted.

Of the interviewees, 39 percent stated they voted the way they did because they have general support for education and the referendums were needed; 18.4 percent stated taxes are too high and the district asked for too much. Seventeen percent stated it was money management, spending wisely and waste; 5 percent stated it was poor planning; and 4 percent stated it was not needed.

The survey

The referendum survey was done by randomly conducting phone interviews with 401 registered voters in the Prior Lake-Savage area between April 19 and 23.

This is the first time the district used Springsted to conduct the study.

“The survey is a snapshot of what registered voters said at one point in time,” Lifto explained. “This survey may or may not reflect the community’s voting patterns come November. This is a guideline. Voting patterns will depend on the economy.”

The survey was a random sample that can generate results of the population as a whole, Lifto said. When the margin of error of 4.5 percent is added in, and the methodology is done correctly, the results are a 95-percent confident view of the population as a whole, he said.

If the survey is compared to a survey done from a booth or by standing outside a grocery store parking lot, those types of methods can be effective and have a place as well, Lifto said, but the difference is in the opinions of the people interviewed, he said.

Although a booth survey can be helpful, it is not reflective of the community as a whole, Lifto added. A scientific method can better represent the community in terms of age, gender, voting activity and parental control, he said.

The people contacted for the survey were broken up into two different groups, one made up of 47 percent men and 53 percent women, and the other 46 percent men and 53 percent women.

Voters’ ages, demographic location, voting activity and whether or not people were parents of children in the district or alumni were also taken into consideration when conducting the interviews.

The full PowerPoint summary given to the board, along with an 81-page report detail, is available on the district’s Web site at www.priorlake-savage.k12.mn.us/

Shawn Hogendorf can be reached at (952) 345-6374 or shogendorf@swpub.com.