Carthage voters said yes by a 65 percent to 35 percent margin to a proposal to expand the Carthage Technical Center’s south campus by extending the school district’s debt service bond levy by six years.
The $10 million proposal received 1,434 yes votes to 770 no votes, exceeding by a comfortable margin the 57.1 percent super-majority needed for passage.
The vote means the school district can add a long-planned expansion to the south tech center that will nearly double the size of the building and allow several classes to be moved out of the high school.
Carthage School Superintendent Mark Baker said that, in turn, will create new space at the 10-year-old Carthage High School that has already seen its student population grow to nearly its projected capacity of more than 1,500 students.
“You’re talking about gaining six classrooms out of the high school that will move to the south tech center,” Baker said. “It also moves all the kids out of the north tech center into the south tech center so they don’t lose instructional time shuttling back and forth. It’s a win-win for everyone, the community, jobs it’ll create, it’s fantastic.”
Baker said plans are for the Board of Education to approve final specifications in June, then approve a contractor in July for the 11-month project.
He said the district hopes to be able to move into the new building by the start of the 2021 school year.
“Pushing back the election two months hurt that timeline some,” Baker said. “We’re not going to rush it and have problems with the building but we’d love to be in it by the beginning of the school year next year.”
Baker said passage of this bond issue will also allow administrators to move on to the next project — construction of a new performing arts center on the high school campus.
The new performing arts center has long been in the plans for the River Street campus. Baker said it is one of two pieces remaining in the plans for the high school campus first drawn up in 2004.
“We’re very excited this passed and we’ll start working on the performing arts center tomorrow to try to get the word out as to what’s going to happen,” Baker said. “We’ll start taking some people to see some performing arts centers so we can start working on some plans. The whole idea was to have two projects in one plan. We’ve got the first part done, so now we need to start working on the second part.”
Other Carthage races
Voters in the Carthage School District chose three out of eight candidates running for three open, three-year terms on the Board of Education.
Winners were Patrick Scott with 1,009 votes, Karen Wilkinson with 988 votes and incumbent Jeff Jones with 929 votes.
Others getting votes were Ed Streich with 905 votes, E. Wayne Wilson with 837 votes, Ryan Collier with 707 votes, Robin Hicklin with 458 votes and Nathan Scott with 219 votes.
In the race for Carthage City Council
• Ward 3 incumbent Mike Daugherty edged out challenger Mary Schwab by three votes, 98-95 with Dustun Edge getting 19 votes.
• In Ward 4, Craig Diggs beat Daniel Beck 288-246.
• In Ward 5, Seth Thompson received 181 votes to Ron Bass’ 65 votes.
• Incumbents Juan Topete and Raymond West were unopposed in Wards 1 and 2.
