Palatine School District 15 Bond Measure (November 2010)

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A Palatine School District 15 Bond Measure was on November 2, 2010 in the township school district of Palatine which is in Cook County.

This measure was defeated

• YES 10,086 (33.14%)
• NO 20,344 (66.86%)d

Background

The school board passed a bond measure, approval of $27 million to be borrowed for capital improvements to school buildings and building new classrooms. Local residents though wanted a say on the issue and collected more than 7,500 signatures to force the issue to a referendum vote in November. Petitioners noted that once residents were aware of what the school board was trying to pass they could not wait to sign the petition. 6,339 valid signatures were actually needed to get the measure approved for the ballot. The petition deadline was April 12, 2010 and commissioners were surprised that petitioners were able to get so many signatures in a short time span.

The petition was being challenged, opponents had stated that there were at least 1,800 signatures that were not valid, if true this would have made the petition invalid for the November election. Two residents stated that they did not feel that the petition was represented in a fair manner to those who signed it and that the signatures needed to be looked at closer. The election board had five days to make a decision in the issue. The Cook County clerk's office would need to verify the signatures as well and once the signatures are verified by the electoral board, then that decision is final. The school board could go ahead with the bond if the petition had been proved invalid.

Opponents had conceded their position that there were a large amount of invalid signatures so the issue will be on the November ballot for residents to vote on. The election board though had to make a decision by June 3 to officially approve it for the November ballot. Those that had brought the signature challenge had dropped their claim. If the council did not approve the measure for the November ballot, the loan proposed would have been put off for a further year.

Board officials put the bond on the November ballot officially, even though some noted they did not support it they still felt that the residents deserved the right to vote on it.

The group that circulated the petitions to put the bond issue on the ballot formed a political committee "Citizens for Accountability in D15." After the board decided to leave the bond question on the ballot this group decided to recommend that voters reject the referendum. They posted their reasons to vote no on their web site www.d15citizens.org.

Voters rejected the bond referendum on November 2, 2010. The final vote was 67% No (20,260 votes) and 33% Yes (10,013 votes). Citizens for Accountability in D15 posted additional information including links to news articles on their web site www.d15citizens.org.

See also

• Palatine Patch, "D-15 Looks Forward After Referendum Defeat," November 3, 2010
• Trib Local, "Residents push bond issue to ballot," November 1, 2010
• Palatine Patch, "Vote No to Move District 15 Forward," October 27, 2010 (dead link)
• Journal & Topics, "Petitions Take Dist. 15 Bond Issue To Voters," April 15, 2010 (dead link)