Earlier this month, voters decided on 103 school referendums around the state,an unusually large number.
Voters in the Merrill area voted against a capital improvements referendum for the public school district.
“Someone asked me the other day, have we lost faith in Merrill or has Merrill given up on, but no, no. Merrill voted no to this project, and we're fine. The vote simply meant, they were not willing to pay for that project. And I respect that and so we'll move on to the next thing.”
That’s Shannon Murray, Superintendent of the Merrill Area Public School District or MAPS
On April 2nd, MAPS went to a capital improvements referendum, but voters did not pass the plan.
54% of voters said ‘no’ to the referendum.
Murray says his team was disappointed by the results.
“We did about all we could to get the word out and the information out,” he said.
He says they plan to start discussions about moving forward at the district’s board meeting on the 17th.
“We'll start those discussions, there's really no hurry. Because like I said, it's not that we're cutting staff as a result of the failure. It's not that we're eliminating positions or programs or any of those kinds of things,” he explained.
That’s in sharp contrast with the district’s 2022 referendum, after which they ended up cutting 30 staff members.
This year statewide, only around 60% of school referendums passed- the lowest approval rating in a midterm or presidential election year since 2010.
Voters had the most ballot questions for spring elections since 2000.
Murray believes there are multiple reasons why the MAPS referendum failed.
“Referendums are really fickle. And so everybody's got their own reason why they're opposed to the concept,” he said.
WXPR was at the poll on the 2nd and spoke to Gary Pool, a Merrill resident, about his vote.
“No, because they've already got enough funds, they don't need to do it,” he said.
“There's just like, a lot of things. If I were to kind of boil it down, I think it's probably about taxes. But there's many, many reasons I heard,” said Murray.
Murray says he appreciates the time people invested in researching the plan.
