Zach Sedgwick, superintendent, Marquette Area Public Schools. (Journal file photo)

MARQUETTE — On Monday night, Marquette Area Public Schools held an open house event at Bothwell Middle School to inform the public about their May 5th bond proposal. Another open house will be held at 5 p.m. tonight at Marquette Senior High School, with optional building tours being held beginning at 3:30 p.m.

These events were designed to help people “understand the project components and proposed

solutions, learn the facts, and get (their) questions answered,” according to the fact sheet sent out by MAPS to area residents this past weekend.

The May 5 bond proposal would address “significant facility challenges across the District, driven by aging infrastructure, outdated learning environments, and growing safety and accessibility requirements,” says the fact sheet.

“In May of last year, the state of Michigan released an infrastructure study and told MAPS that we had over 100 million of critical infrastructure needs,” said Zack Sedgwick, MAPS Superintendent.

“We prioritized that list so we could accommodate a number of different plans,” said Sedgwick.

Back in September, MAPS released a survey to the public to ask which of those plans local voters would be most in favor of. A 59.995-million-dollar bond was selected, which addresses the most urgent and highest-priority projects.

Should the bond pass, every building in the district would receive improvements, focusing on three key areas of safety, infrastructure, and programming. Specific projects include making district buildings ADA-compliant, a renovation of Bothwell Middle School which would add Career Technology Education classrooms and new technology and classroom furniture for classrooms across the district.

The bond would cost property-owners $155 per $100,000 of property value each year, an amount which would decrease in regular intervals over a 28-year repayment period. This amount would be in addition to the annual sinking fund which MAPS receives each year to maintain its buildings.

“The District is grateful to taxpayers for renewing the $1.3 million annual sinking fund in 2022, but large, multi-site improvements require additional funding, such as a bond, to complete projects of this scale,” says the fact sheet. “The district would continue to utilize sinking funds

for annual capital maintenance repairs, to help ensure our buildings are well-maintained.”

Michigan is one of twelve states that doesn’t provide infrastructure funding to public schools, meaning that districts need to rely on millages to maintain their facilities.

“We levy about 1.31 million, and the state average is about 4.5 million,” said Sedgwick. “We’ve kept our millage rate low for a really long time, but because of that, the condition of our facilities is in need of improvement. We have tried to be cognizant of minimizing the cost to our taxpayers.”

The total millage level if the bond passes would be $2.85 mills; still well below state average.

Sedgwick says that, so far, response from the community has been positive. However, if the bond fails to pass at the May 5 vote, the problems won’t go away.

“The need isn’t going to change if for some reason the bond wasn’t approved,” said Sedgwick. “We’d have to revisit it in a future election.”

However, if the bond does pass, “Every building, every student is impacted,” said Sedgwick. “We made sure to prioritize in a way that the most critical needs in every building were addressed as part of this proposal.”

More information can be found at Tuesday night’s open house, as well as at https://www.mapsnet.org/page/2026-bond-information.

Annie Lippert can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 550. Her email address is alippert@miningjournal.net.