TECUMSEH — Voters in the Tecumseh Public Schools district will be asked in November to approve a millage to pay for building repairs, starting with the community pool’s roof.

At their meeting Monday, Tecumseh Board of Education members settled on asking voters to approve paying 1.75 mills into a sinking fund. Board members said that was the right amount between 1.5 mills, which some said might not be enough to pay for the projects they expect to come up in the next five years, and 2 mills, which some said voters might view as being more than they could afford to pay.

“Perhaps the middle, compromise number will get us what we need to do to successfully start the years of repair that just wasn’t provided for” by past administrations, trustee Mary Tommelein said.

At 1.75 mills, the owner of property with a taxable value of $100,000 would pay $175 a year. The millage would be levied on all properties in the district and would raise about $7.4 million over five years.

The resolution, which was approved on a 7-0 vote, did not include how long the millage would run, but the intent is to ask voters to approve it for five years, district communications director Vic Pratt said in a text message.

The district has until Aug. 13 to file the ballot language with the Lenawee County Clerk’s Office in order to be on the Nov. 5 ballot, according to the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office.

Initially, the funds raised by the millage would go toward repairs to the Tecumseh Memorial Community Pool building. The pool is on the north end of Tecumseh Middle School. Last fall, it was closed for about two months after corrosion was found on the steel roof structure. After closer inspection by engineers, it was found that it was safe to reopen the pool but the engineers told the school board that repairs would need to be completed in the next one to two years.

The district has since obtained estimates of how much the pool building work will cost and how long it will take to do it. It is expected to cost about $2.5 million and could be completed in three phases, starting at the end of the 2024-25 school year.

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In April, the board voted to ask voters to approve a millage to pay off bonds that the district would sell to finance the pool roof repairs. After being told by its lawyers that state law doesn’t allow using bond financing to pay for this kind of work, the board rescinded its bond proposal and started looking into a sinking fund, which can be used to pay for the pool work and other building and site projects.

The district’s operations director, Joshua Mattison, has presented the board with several projects that he expects to come up in the next five years and projected costs.

When the district started exploring ways to pay for the pool building repairs, it posted an online survey to ask what voters would be willing to pay. That survey, school board president Tony Rebottaro said, showed support for paying less than 2 mills.

Board vice president Lynne Davis said that the district could cover the building maintenance expected in the 2024-25 school year with the annual 3% allocation from its general fund, but beyond that, the costs begin to rise. The projected building maintenance projects in the following four years add up to $2.8 million, which does not include the pool building repairs.

A lot of the expected building work would have been addressed if voters had approved either of the bond proposals that were rejected in 2022, board trustee Greg Lewis said. Those repairs still need to be done, and even the high school, which opened in August 2001, is getting to the age where its original parts are beginning to need to be repaired or replaced.

“The pool is the easiest thing to look at. The other buildings, the other projects there, are things that have to get done, too,” trustee Jacob Martinez said. “They’re not things we’re just trying to grab because we’re going to have a vote. They’re things we’ve looked at, we’ve prioritized, that the district needs. This isn’t a vote about the pool. It’s a vote about a sinking fund for capital projects that the district needs, only one of which is the pool.”

Among the projects are repaving driveways and updating bathrooms at the middle school.

“This is certainly not a wild wishlist,” Rebottaro said. “This is the bare necessities that have got to be done.”

— Contact reporter David Panian at dpanian@lenconnect.com or follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @lenaweepanian.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Tecumseh Public Schools to seek sinking fund millage in November