BURBANK : Deadline on School Plans Established

The Burbank Unified School District board has given itself a Dec. 16 deadline to decide how to renovate the district’s two high schools and present a bond referendum to the voters next year.

“One way or the other, next year this will go out to a bond,” said board member Denise Lioy Wilcox. She is also a member of a joint-action group made up of City Council and school board members that met Tuesday morning.

The school board members on Tuesday announced the deadline plan, hammered out over the weekend after a special board meeting last week. At last week’s meeting, the board decided that since a survey showed voter resistance to paying higher taxes to renovate Burbank and John Burroughs high schools, it would have to find cheaper reconstruction alternatives and other sources of funding.

But board members had also been encouraged by the survey, which reflected high confidence in how the school district was run. Also, without being asked how much they would pay in extra taxes, 64% of voters questioned said they would support a $100-million bond issue.

But when given figures on how much taxes would have to be raised to pay different bond amounts, the survey showed that voters would not be willing to pay for a bond issue of more than $30 million or $35 million. The cost of the renovations is now projected to be at least $91 million. The survey of 400 Burbank registered voters was conducted in June by Price Research of San Ramon, Calif.

In the joint meeting Tuesday morning, the school board and City Council members discussed the possibility of using city redevelopment funds for the renovations, Wilcox said. They also discussed exempting senior citizens and the disabled from the bond issue taxes.

The board has set Dec. 16 as the final deadline for having a reconstruction plan with funding options.