(KAIR)--Voters in USD 377 will go to the polls next month to decide whether or not to give the board authority to raise the district's capital outlay levy.

Superintendent Steve Wiseman says an increased mil levy would help pay back a recent federal loan recently granted to the district in the form of a $3 million QZAB bond that the district “has to pay back over seventeen years, $176,000, which the board has budgeted for, but the reality is, when the capital outlay...there has to be a mechanism for to how to pay for those types of expenses.”

Funds from the loan are being utilized to make several structural improvements to both the Elementary and Junior/Senior High Schools, and Wiseman says this method is different than what has happened in past years in that “in the past, what we have done is that we have shifted funds away from the classroom and from other funds in order to maintain our facilities, our buildings. It's a situation where when you take into consideration everything that has been on capital outlay, what we have done in the past is we have basically been using money from other areas to pay for that, rather than use the mechanisms designed by the state legislature, which is a capital outlay mil levy.”

Wiseman adds that since there is no General Election this year, the Special Election was scheduled for October 6th. He says that “the board of education had to hold a special election, and do so in a manner that was timely enough that if the resolution passes, that the county can appropriately levy taxes in accordance with the budget that passed in August.”

Wiseman says there is a four mil levy in place currently, and the resolution, if approved, would give the school board the authority to raise it up to eight mills, the maximum allowed by state law.