Voters approved the Unit 5 tax referendum on the second attempt – a decision that district leaders say will avoid painful budget cuts starting next school year.
Over 59% of voters approved the referendum, with 100% of precincts reporting, according to WGLT’s tallies of election returns.
“We’re very excited, primarily for our students. This is a huge win for our current and future students in Unit 5,” Superintendent Kristen Weikle told WGLT.
Soon after the results became clear, Unit 5 school board president Barry Hitchins announced a special meeting on April 11 apparently to reverse the budget cuts set in motion Jan. 31. Hitchins said they’d “take action to allow the district to continue to provide the services it currently provides to our students.”
“It is now incumbent on the Board of Education and administration to keep our promise to the community and be good stewards of this enhanced revenue source,” Hitchins said.
This was Unit 5’s second attempt to pass the measure. 53% of voters rejected it in November. In response, the school board laid out two years of budget cuts that they said could be avoided only if the referendum passed, and they quickly put it back on the ballot.
That got the attention of many voters. Turnout jumped to 25% for Tuesday’s election – well above the 12% turnout that McLean County saw four years ago in a similar non-mayoral election.
“We continued to provide a lot of informational sessions. And I noticed a lot of community members – some with children in the district, some without children in the district – asking a lot of really great questions. Really trying to understand what it was we were asking. A lot more people engaged in the process this time,” Weikle said.
The referendum was arguably the biggest issue on Tuesday’s ballot. Its biggest supporters include a pro-referendum slate of Unit 5 school board candidates and groups like the Unit Five Education Association teachers’ union and others in organized labor, McLean County Democrats, both Twin City mayors, and some business leaders.
Those efforts were coordinated by the Yes For Unit 5 pro-referendum community group, which claimed victory Tuesday night.
“Wholeheartedly, it passed because there was an understanding of the severity of what could happen – what was already board-approved – as far as programs and cutting costs,” said Patrick Mainieri, a spokesperson for Yes For Unit 5. “It became very (tangible) for much of our community who lived and experienced a public school environment. They have many memories of what they experienced in their youth, and parents want their kids to have better experiences than they had. … Once the district was able to explain what would need to be cut in order to respond to the deficits they were looking at, it became very real for the community.”
Opposition to the referendum was led by the McLean County Republican Party and a slate of anti-referendum school board candidates who were defeated Tuesday.
One of those anti-referendum board candidates was Dennis Frank, who lost with only 9% of the vote.
"The community said they wanted to get taxed more, so they voted yes. And that's fine," Frank said.
Unit 5 school board member Kelly Pyle won re-election Tuesday. She supported the referendum.
"I really feel like the referendum kind of was the driving factor that drove people to want to run for the school board, to have an influence on how that would look going forward. A lot of people had ideas about how to resolve the deficit. And so, you know, there was a lot of engagement," Pyle said.
WGLT asked Weikle what her message was to the 41% of people who voted “no” on the referendum.
“I’m appreciative of everyone who participated in the election process and cast a ballot. That’s the beauty of our democracy. I hope that they’ll continue to support our schools, even if they didn’t vote yes. I appreciate their engagement and I hope they’ll want to work with us in the district in supporting our students,” she said.
Mainieri said the Yes for Unit 5 team came across people who voted “no” in November and changed their minds for Tuesday’s election.
“As we were canvassing and interacting with the community, numerous people said that in the fall, they just didn’t understand what they were voting for. They didn’t understand the intricacies of it. This time around, they had a lot more time to understand and research and learn and have conversations,” he said.
The referendum was aimed at addressing Unit 5’s $12 million budget deficit. Voters were asked to bump up the Education Fund tax rate cap from $2.72 per $100 equalized assessed value to $3.60. The overall tax rate will still decrease — from $5.51 per $100 of EAV to $4.92 — by 2026. That’s because the district is paying off bonds and other debt over the next two years.
