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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Like I said, because there was a resistance to investing significant sums in expanding capacity, the school board didn’t pursue big-ticket expansion projects that risked voters rejecting the bonds, they stuck with more modest projects (and substantially smaller bonds than we’ve seen in the last few referenda) that weren’t going to ruffle as many feathers and bring out anti-bond voters who otherwise weren’t motivated to show up at the polls (let’s not forget how dysmal Arlington’s voter turnout typically is).

Going back to the Yorktown example, in retrospect the degree of political whiplash around that project was amazing (and I was among the people who did the 180, I won’t pretend I was more enlightened than everyone else at the time). In 2006 there was so much heat from the public about the cost of the Yorktown renovation, in significant part because, as I said, enrollment had been declining for several years and it seemed like such a potential waste of taxpayer dollars. All kinds of letters to the editor in the various papers, WaPo covered it repeatedly, some civic associations got involved not just in advocating on the bond itself but also in the whole bonding framework, it was a big deal. But then as the phases were completed, the school was so quickly over capacity again that people started attacking the school board for its poor planning in not adding even more seats to the project (and for not doing the same at W-L as well).[/quote]

The voters approved $79mm in 2002 with 78% of 56,135 total votes and $78mm in 2004 with 80% of 89,209 total votes. Using a simple CPI calculator, those bonds would have been around $100mm in 2014 and over $110mm in 2016. And the CPI understates the increase in construction costs.

The last two school bonds approved were $106mm in 2014 with 75% of 66,328 total votes and $139mm in 2016 with 79% of 116,067 total votes.

So no, the bonds were not substantially smaller than we’ve seen in the last few referenda. They also received a higher percentage of yes votes than the most recent referenda.[/quote]

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