School Bond Vote Certified, Passed By One Vote

Because of the one vote margin of victory for last week's School Bond election, many residents have wondered if the victory would pass the final certification step. It has. As of this past Tuesday, August 12th, all of the electoral results from the August 5th primary election have been certified. (You can view all of the official results on the county election web page.)

Of particular interest, the school bond results remain the same with the bond winning by exactly one vote. (See the results here.) The bond lost in Bridgewater by 17 votes, it passed in Freedom by 3 votes, passed in the village by 66 votes, lost in Manchester Township by 26 votes, lost in Sharon by 22 votes, received no votes for or against amongst the handful of Grass Lake voters affected, and lost by 3 (8 to 5) by the few Norvell voters affected. Those are now the official, certified results.

Cherie Vannatter, Superintendent of Manchester Community Schools, was contacted by The Mirror in order to get her reaction to the narrow victory. "I was shocked that it passed by one vote," she said. The whole day was spent with supporters of the bond feeling that the election could go either way.

Now that the bond has passed, the superintendent plans to have a meeting with Communications by Design, a consulting company that assisted with communication about the bond.  In this meeting they will take the broad scope of the bond and narrow it down to specific projects and develop a timeline. The school also intends to form committees to get input on different aspects of the bond that will include people from the school district and community.

It is the hope of the school district that now that the election has been settled, all community members can come back to the process and make the best decisions about how the money will be specifically spent. As with all community projects, the work and planning are ongoing.

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by Fritz Swanson

Fritz Swanson has written for The Believer, the Christian Science Monitor, Print Magazine, McSweeney's, Esopus, LSA Magazine, and The Mid-American Review. He serves as a trustee on the Manchester District Library Board. He's the designer and publisher of The Manchester Mirror.

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