On November 6, 2018, you are being asked to go to the polls to vote on numerous items, one of these items will be whether or not the Williams Bay School District should put a School Resource Officer in our schools.  The exact wording of the question is as follows:

Shall the School District of Williams Bay, Walworth County, Wisconsin be authorized to exceed the revenue limit specified in Section 1221.91, Wisconsin Statutes, by $90,000 beginning with the 2018-2019 school year, for recurring purposes consisting of paying a portion of the cost of salary expenses and benefits associated with a school resource officer?

___ Yes

___ No

As an English teacher, I always told my students to write in plain, simple English which everyone can easily understand.   Unfortunately, the correct legal wording of a referendum question does not always follow these same rules.  If I were using my own words, the question would read as follows:

As a member of the School District of Williams Bay, do you want us to increase the safety of our staff and students by putting a police officer into our schools?  If you do, the District will need to raise your property taxes to pay for this new position.  We will have to increase our budget by $90,000 a year to pay for our portion of this position’s salary and fringe benefits.  The police officer will work for the School District 75% of the time and the Village of Williams Bay the other 25%.  Do you support raising your property taxes to pay for this position?

___ Yes

___ No

The increase in your property taxes to pay for this new position would be about $9 per $100,000 of property value.  So if your house if valued at around $300,000 your tax bill would go up $27 per year.  This increase would continually be on your property taxes unless either a future School Board or Village Board decided that this position would no longer be necessary.  At that time, this amount would no longer be added on to your yearly property tax bill.

Over the past several weeks, I have written a series of blogs to try to answer as many questions about the referendum as possible.  I am sure that you may still have some questions that have not been answered.  In order to try to address these final questions, the School Board and Williams Bay Police Department has scheduled an information session about the School Resource Officer (SRO) position on Tuesday, October 30 at 7:00 p.m. in the Middle/High School Lecture Center.  I encourage you to attend and get your final questions answered.  

If you have any questions about this referendum that I have not yet answered please feel free to contact me by phone (262) 245-1575, by email wanderson@williamsbayschools.org or by stopping in and seeing me at school.  I will be happy to answer your questions to the best of my ability.  As always, thank you for your continued support of our students, staff and community.