DeKalb school board rejects attempt to put failed sales tax referendum back on ballot

DeKALB – The DeKalb School Board this week rejected a district attempt to place a failed sales tax referendum back on the ballot in April.

The DeKalb County Area School Districts County School Facility Occupation Tax, which proposed a 1% new sales tax benefiting public schools countywide, failed to garner enough votes in November. The measure, which appeared on all ballots countywide, received 23,181 no votes and 21,333 yes votes.

An attempt by DeKalb School District 428 to get the referendum placed back on the April 1 Consolidated Election ballot failed in a 3-4 vote Tuesday. Dissenting votes were cast by DeKalb school board members Amanda Harness, Board Vice President Christopher Boyes, and members Steven Byers and Fred Davis.

Harness questioned why the district wanted to pose the referendum question to voters again.

“I want to understand why this is coming back up because we put this out to the taxpayers and they said no,” Harness said. “Why are we putting this back on here? What school is asking us to do this? And who’s on board with it? What school districts?”

District officials previously said the new sales tax could have generated about $10 million which would have been divided by district student population. DeKalb is the largest school district in the county.

Superintendent Minerva Garcia-Sanchez said getting the measure on the spring ballot was always part of the plan if the referendum failed in the fall.

“When we did the first vote around, it was asked at that time, that if it didn’t make it that we would ask again in an open session to revote it to be able to put it back on again on a ballot,” Garcia-Sanchez said.

Garcia-Sanchez said all DeKalb County school districts, aside from Sycamore, Indian Creek and Hinckley-Big Rock, are in support of putting the referendum on the ballot again.

District officials said DeKalb schools would use the tax money in part to pay back debt from building DeKalb High School.

In order to place a sales tax referendum on the ballot, school districts representing at least 50% of grade-school students in DeKalb County have to authorize the referendum.

DeKalb School District has 45.9% of the county’s student population enrolled in its schools. Sycamore has 23.8%, according to Sycamore school district documents.

Harness said the matter before the board didn’t sit well with her.

“And we wonder why people don’t trust us,” Harness said.

Board President Deyci Ramirez disagreed.

“Taking the fact that other districts don’t receive the same funding, I think, it’s also fair for us to, again, put it back on the voters,” Ramirez said. “They could shut it down again. That’s perfectly fine, but at least it doesn’t lay on us, whether or not we give them the choice to choose for themselves.”