Archive: News

The votes were counted after the polls closed at 9pm Tuesday, and when the dust had settled the $22 million 2007-2008 Lansing School budget and $362,000 for school busses had been approved by the voters.  After a whirlwind week in which one candidate dropped out, a new candidate who replaced her got the top number of votes for one of two open school board seats, and the incumbent lost her bid for another term.

But the news wasn't good for the Lansing Community Library Center, which lost its bid to become an independent library by 32 votes.  "It's incredibly disappointing," says Library Chairperson Marlaine Darfler.  "We went back after (the vote count) and were looking at this gorgeous building.  It's paid for with the doors open, ready to go.  We though, 'Oh my God, we can't lock this place up!'  But people also have to realize we can't continue trucking along.  We will truck along, but at a much slower speed."

The school board vote took several unexpected turns starting when Gina Lord-Shattuck withdrew from the race for family reasons.  That precipitated a series of events that included the resignation of Superintendent Mark Lewis and the reopening of the petition process to allow new candidates to qualify by 5pm Tuesday.  By lunch time that day Michael Cheatham had gathered the necessary signatures and turned them in to make his campaign official.  Later that night Cheatham faced incumbent Christine Iacobucci and opponent David Dittman in a debate sponsored by the Lansing PTSO, hosted by League of Women Voters' Mary Berkelman.


From the beginning it was clear that the three represented different points of view with Iacobucci stressing that trust between the district and the public needed to be restored, Dittman focusing on improving the Board of Education's fiscal responsibility, and Cheatham saying that the trust issue is less than some people claim, and that focusing on the quality of the education Lansing offers is of paramount importance.

When Dittman and Iacobucci joined forces in their advertising,  Cheatham encouraged voters to write in votes for Dawn Kleeschulte if they chose to vote for him.  He attributed the lack of trust in the district and Lansing's inability to keep school administrators to Iacobucci, suggesting that while the reasons that superintendents Price, Service, Kaiser, and Lewis had resigned are complex, that Iacobucci had played a role in all of them.  This along with his platform of stressing academic excellence must have resonated with voters, who elected him to the board with 783 votes, the higherst number of any of the candidates.  Dittman won the second seat with 781 votes.  Iacobucci finished with 666 votes and Kleeschulte garnered 275 write-in votes.


"The board and administration now have a golden opportunity to work together as a leadership team in perhaps a vastly more productive manner than has been the case in recent history," Lewis says in his weekly column in today's Lansing Star.  "Much is to be accomplished on many fronts in this district. It can only be done through a strong commitment on behalf of the board and administration to work together in an environment of mutual trust and support."

After a budget that failed last year and a $20 million capital project that failed by 16 votes last February, the new budget passing was very good news for the School Board.  Even though the budget will mean a 7.377% rise in the tax levy this year, the total budget is less than the cap that would be mandated by the state if it had not passed.  That the bus proposal also passed suggested that voters would resume their support of the district if it proves that it is attempting to be more fiscally responsible.

But that 7.4% rise may have been the demise of the library initiative.  Despite a record of operating in the black under a volunteer administration for six years, including two completed and wholly paid for capital projects, voters said no to a new tax that would have added only 17 cents per thousand dollars of property valuation.  She says that it wasn't so much a vote against the library as a vote against taxes.  "I think having (the school and library votes) paired together hurt us," Darfler says.  "People said OK, we're going to do this school thing, but that's it.  If 17 nos had been 17 yesses we would have had it."


But that sterling performance has taken its toll on the volunteers.  Library officials say that it is increasingly harder to run the facility on a completely volunteer basis, and that sources of private funding are drying up.  Without public support the library's future is uncertain.  "We're going to run it as carefully as we can until we have to close the doors, hopefully for a very short time until we can put it up for election again," Darfler says.  "At that point maybe someone will say, 'Well you know, $30 per year isn't so bad for kids to have a place to read.'  That's really what we're asking."

But as hard as it is to continue, Darfler says that the library is the volunteers' passion, and that despite the setback she hopes the community will rally when it is brought to the voters at some point in the future.  "It will mean an austerity budget," she says.  "It's probably going to mean fewer hours.  We will keep it open this summer.  We want the kids to have a summer program to go to.  We want kids to read this summer, so we're dedicated to keeping it open this summer.  We have a little bit of money earmarked for books that people gave us, so we can buy some more books."

Darfler says that the library board will meet next Tuesday to strategize on how best to proceed, to keep the library open until a second vote can be arranged.  "We know we have to scale back immediately," she says.  "We had 742 people who voted yes, and over 2,000 patrons many of whom are under 18.  We don't want to punish them for this.  We're going to try as hard as we can to just keep running until we can put it up for a vote again."
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