For the last couple months, there have been Facebook articles and letters to the editor distorting the true facts about our upcoming RTR Facility Bond Election on Nov. 7. I believe our stakeholders need to get truthfully informed about the issues, and then voters need to vote either yes or no, depending on their convictions. But what must not happen, is where distorted facts are put out to the public; just to hopefully get others to vote the way they want them to vote.

Here are some actual truthful facts about our school:

• In 2019, the RTR School Board did promise that not one penny of the $35 million bond issue for the new (PreK-12) facility would be spent toward any development of athletic fields. The RTR school board kept that promise and we finished the project under budget and with an enhanced facility.

• The new RTR athletic complex was approved late into the project by our school board and funded by an existing funding source, along with a small amount of our existing fund balance. No new tax increases were approved for our RTR voters at this time.

• The opponents to the vote say we should close open-enrollment at RTR, instead of adding on additional space. What a terrible idea this would be, as we would be the only public school in southwest Minnesota to close open enrollment. The RTR School District presently has 167 students who are open-enrolling into RTR and 97 students open-enrolling out of our school district. This action of stopping open-enrollment would be seen as a form of exclusion and discrimination; it would have great financial implications; it would brand our community and school as unwelcoming and snob-like; it would limit our educational opportunities; and most likely it would create legal and ethical concerns in the courts for being discriminatory towards students that wish to attend our school.

• Prior to the construction of our new (PreK-12) facility, our school had six full-size cross-courts to hold all of our practice sessions. Presently with the new facility, we have five full-size cross-courts for practice. By adding this new gym, we would then be back to the needed number of practice courts and we also would have an approved Minnesota Storm Shelter to protect our staff and students.

• In those misleading articles, they say that their taxes have gone up greatly and it is due to the school district actions. This increase in personal taxes is not because of anything the school has done, but simply because their land market value has increased 20% in recent years. In fact, the school taxes on our new facility is 40%-50%% lower than what we said it would be, at the time of the (PreK-12) election. This is all because the Ag2Sschool credit has increased from 40% to 70%. They say the District will need to pay off $55 million of debt if we pass our bond addition next week; where the actual truth is that our local taxpayers will only need to pay off less than $20 million in debt after the AG2School Credit payment. The new bond projected tax increase on a $9,000 1-Acre Homestead piece of land is $0.69 annually.

We have a beautiful school at RTR. The question for our taxpayers is; “Should we make it even better!”

Please Vote on Tuesday, Nov. 7, from 4-8 p.m.

— Dave Marlette is superintendent of the Russell-Tyler-Ruthton School District