Photo by Jenny Kirk Springsted Public Finance representative Dr. Kelly Smith, right, talks with resident Rod Schulze and others, including Keith Welgraven, left, on Thursday in the RTR High School library in Tyler.

TYLER — With less than three weeks remaining before the upcoming bond referendum, Russell-Tyler-Ruthton residents at the community meeting at the high school on Thursday were hungry for open, honest answers to their questions.

About 250 individuals gathered in the gym to listen to a trio of short presentations before having the opportunity to break up into smaller group settings and ask questions to district administrators and professionals involved with the RTR facilities improvement project.

“I thought it was a really good turnout,” said Anna Hesse, who currently has children in the district. “We had almost the whole side of the gym full. A lot of good questions were asked. Hopefully that helped people gain some perspective.”

After the community meeting in the gym, more than 10 different groups of people struck up conversations with each other, while others sought out information from the professions on site. In one classroom, Dr. Kelly Smith of Springsted Public Finance, Debt Management and Compliance Services was calculating the individual tax impact for anyone who asked.

“I had probably 25 that requested me to take a look at their individual parcels and give them an estimate on their tax impact,” Smith said. “Especially when you’re dealing with ag property, it can get complicated. The bottom line in something like this is ‘Yes, there’s this vote out here, but how much is it going to cost me?’ They want to know for sure. So we’re trying to do anything we can to answer those questions so people have all the answers they need to make a big decision.”

Someone with an estimated market value of $200,000 would see a monthly increase of $51 a month, or $614 a year. In taking the district average value per acre ($5,800), a resident with an agricultural homestead would pay $5.91 an acre annually. For someone with 750 acres, the tax increase each year would be $4,400, or $369 a month. Those amounts include the Ag2School 40 percent credit.

Fred Nolan, executive director for Minnesota Rural Education Association (MREA), told residents via video presentation that he’s confident that Ag2School is not going away.

“There is so much bipartisan support,” Nolan said. “In talking with legislators, they’re in shock that people think it’s going away. It’s a permanent law existing into perpetuity. It would take an act of both bodies of the Legislature and a signature by the governor to amend or repeal the program.”

Currently, 277 school districts are taking advantage of the ag land credit.

“It is not going away,” Nolan said. “If anything, it may actually increase as land is going down in value.”

RTR parent Jason Gunnare thought it was a productive evening.

“I was happy with the turnout and hopefully people’s questions get answered,” Gunnare said. “There’s a percentage that have decided against and a percentage that are for it. But then there are those in the middle who haven’t decided.”

Russell resident Matt Serreyn said that getting accurate information was really important to him. He said he appreciated that the booklet put out by the district included such valuable details.

“You have to believe that our board is doing the right thing for our district,” Serreyn said. “And the numbers have been put out. The book they sent out seems very thorough.”

Serreyn said he has a strong feeling that the referendum is going to pass.

“I feel that it’s going to happen,” he said. “It needs to happen for the community. I actually went to school in all three buildings. The buildings have served their purpose. They’re old. We’re spending a lot of money on the upkeep of them and it’s just time to upgrade.”

Voters in the district will be asked to weigh in on the referendum on Feb. 12. While some have argued that potentially adding a $35 million debt over 20 years is too much of a burden, others have stated that it is time to stop kicking the can down the road and start doing what is right to ensure that current and future RTR students receive the best education as possible. Regardless of anyone’s stance, Superintendent Dave Marlette said he wanted any animosity between each other to end.

“It has to stop,” Marlette said. “We are better than that.”

Marlette also commented on the lawsuit that was filed against the district recently, adding that it has to do with the 2006 consolidation agreement.

“I want to say one thing about the lawsuit and the four individuals that put that forward,” he said. “Any negativity toward them needs to stop right now. I believe in democracy. We feel one way. They feel another way. We can’t figure it out, so let’s let someone else do that. Let the judge decide.”

A motion hearing is scheduled on Feb. 6 in Lyon County District Court. On advice from their attorney, Marlette said he doesn’t believe there will be a delay in the referendum voting process.

“We just want people to make an informed decision and vote ‘yes’ or ‘no,'” he said.

If the referendum, passes, Marlette said the next step would be to create an exact blueprint for the preK-12 facility in Tyler.

“The first thing we’d do is sign a formal contract with the architects and construction manager,” Marlette said. “Then once the contracts are authorized and signed off from the board, we would then have our architect and construction manager work together to develop a concrete set of plans.”

During that process, the public will have the opportunity to share in the overall vision.

“As the concrete plans are being developed, people can come in and give testimony on what changes they think need to be made,” Marlette said. “I always say this and I mean it wholeheartedly — I don’t care whose idea it is, I just want the best idea for our kids. But we’ve also made a promise to our stakeholders that we’ll keep it to $35 million or lower, so we are going to make sure we are still within that budget.”

Once that is complete, the bid process for everything will start.

“There will be a date when those bids have to be back to us — that process will take us all the way to July or August — but when they come back, we’ll go through all of those,” Marlette said. “We might have five, six or seven bids just on the electrical, so we’ll check all of them out to see if (the bidder is) reputable. It won’t just be about the lowest bid. But we’ll make a selection for each of those bid packages and then get into a contract with those people.”

When asked about the timeline, Marlette said the hope is to have students in the new building in September 2021. One of the first steps, he said, is to demolish all but the north and west part of the high school. The students will remain in the educational wings during the tear down and new construction processes.

While they initially hoped the Tyler gym could remain, it is neither cost-effective nor a good thing structurally.

“The cost got over 60 percent and the state said to strongly consider building new if it gets to that point,” Marlette said. “This building is already 60 years old and we’d be anchoring our new facility with it. It will eventually fail. And it’s right in the center of the new building.”

The number of gymnasiums was among the many clarifications made during the community meeting. Marlette explained that there were not five different gyms in the proposed plan. Rather, there is a competition gym and a practice gym. Together, there are five cross-courts. He added that the gym is used for more than sports.

“We use this gym every hour of every day,” Marlette said. “It’s used for sports, yes, but also for educational uses like health and physical education.”

Safety and security issues were also raised. Marlette referenced a page in the booklet and noted that everyone would enter one of two secure entrances.

“There’s the front entrance (off of Strong Street) and the parking lot one,” he said. “The buses will drop students off at the front and the staff and student will park and then use the west side entrance. We won’t let cars be by our little kids.”

Visitors will have to push a button for entry. A special button can also be pressed to trap an intruder in different locations.

“We live in a different world,” Marlette said. “We have to secure our kids.”

In responding to questions, Marlette said there is a division between the different age levels of students and that the playground for the youngest children would be fenced.

When asked what would happen to all the trophies and pennants, Marlette said decisions would have to be made but that he believes there would be built-in trophy cases.

“We’ll try to preserve as much as we can of Russell, Ruthton, Tyler and RTR together,” he said.

When asked to elaborate about the 500-seat auditorium, Marlette said he does not think of it as an extra.

“It’s amazing to have that,” Marlette said. “It would be used all the time.”

RTR board chair Jeff Hansen said they took the advice from people at Lakeview School.

“We asked what they would’ve done differently and they said, ‘Build our auditorium bigger,'” Hansen said.

The proposed new preK-12 school has 159,791 total square feet. With preK-12 enrollment at 640, that equates to 249.7 square feet per student.