A special election is a week away to issue bonds to move the Washington Middle School to a new high school addition.

The district held community meetings and two online surveys earlier this year to narrow down four building options the district should pursue to address the century-old facility, and based upon that input the district has petitioned to hold an election on whether to issue up to $25 million in general obligation bonds to add four new additions to the high school including a new gymnasium. If passed, the referendum would not increase property owner’s current tax levy. Superintendent Willie Stone says he’s received many questions on why the project is not planned to commence until 2023, “The reason why we’re running it so early is if it doesn’t pass then that’s going to be my job to figure out why it didn’t pass. Try to go around to talk to people to get an understanding of what made it not go, what made it not work. And as I’ve said already we’ve tried to do a lot of that up front to get a lot of information, a lot of input from our community, but if it doesn’t pass then we need to go out and get more input from our community and see what exactly is holding us back and then we’ll look to run it again before the end of the 2023 school year.”

The referendum needs 60% of votes in favor to pass, and voters in the Washington district can vote via absentee at the county auditor’s office now through September 13th, and polls will be open in the basement of the county courthouse and at Brighton Town Hall from 7 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday, September 14th. KCII will bring you the unofficial results when the polls close election night.