$105M Lake Forest High School Referendum Leads By Less Than 100 Votes

LAKE FOREST, IL — A plan to borrow $105 million to cover the costs of renovating Lake Forest High School appeared to narrowly win approval from voters Tuesday.

Unofficial results from the Lake County Clerk's Office showed people voting "yes" on the bond issue referendum question outnumbered those voting "no" by fewer than 100 votes.

The high school's 88-year-old east campus at 285 North McKinley Road in need of major repairs, according to district officials.

Nearly half of the spending in the proposed facilities master plan would be devoted to infrastructure, with nearly $20.7 million earmarked for the HVAC system, more than $8.5 million for electrical work, $6.7 million for safety, $4.6 million for roofing and $4.1 million for exterior work and $4 million for technology, according to a summary of the scope of the plan.

The rest of the $105 million would be earmarked for improvements to instruction spaces, with more than $17 million for classrooms, and almost $15.5 million for science labs, $5.7 million for student services, $4.6 million for furniture and $4.4 million for the graphic design, photo, art and media labs.

All the infrastructure work would be completed in 2025 and 2026, while the final $6.9 million of work on instructional spaces would take place in 2027, according to cost estimates.

Voters in the district last approved a capital referendum in 2006, borrowing $54 million on a 20-year payment plan. That covered the cost of improving about half of the school's classrooms, along with adding the music wing, cafeteria and commons. Accounting for inflation, that would have amounted to nearly $80 million in today's dollars, according to district officials.

District 115 board members last month said the referendum was a result of past decisions, which have left many of the school's facilities nearing or past the end of their useful life.

Board member Marcus Schabacker, who was first elected two years ago, said at a meeting last month it was obvious that the district needed to do something different than applying "band-aids" to its facilities as it has done for the past decade or more.

"When I hear the stories of leaking roofs, non-closing windows, teachers blocking vents because it's either too cold or too hot, or bringing in electrical fans to keep the classroom warm, when I visited the science labs and thought I had suddenly gone in a time warp backwards to 45 years ago when I went to school," Schabacker said, "it became pretty obvious in understanding some of the infrastructure issues with end-of-life."

While 90 percent of the referendum package would be allocated to the high school's older campus on McKinley Road, the 1970-built LFHS west campus at 300 S. Waukegan Road is in line for HVAC, plumbing and electrical work as well.

Dewey Winebrenner, one of three incumbents who ran uncontested in the April 4 election, said it would significantly change the character of the school if the board needed to cut its operating budget by "anything close" to what is now needed for maintenance.

"If anything, we should've gone forward in 2020 when COVID hit," Winebrenner said at last month's meeting.

"We chose not to, we thought it was the fiscally prudent thing to do at the time, but we need to move forward with this referendum. We need the community's support," he said. "I think these costs are going to be in front of our school in the near future. And we need to pay for it today."

Census data shows the median value of owner-occupied housing units is $812,900 in Lake Forest and $660,500 in Lake Bluff.

A tax calculator provided by the district to calculate the additional cost of the referendum indicates that amounts to an additional $788 in annual property tax for the median Lake Forest homeowner and $636 for the median homeowner in Lake Bluff, when both are claiming a general homestead exemption.

Owners of homes assessed at $1 million would pay about $1,000 in extra property tax for the next two decades.

The total cost to taxpayers will not be known until the bonds are sold and interest rates are determined — though district officials anticipated paying about 4 to 6 percent, based on average borrowing costs for triple-a bond rated school districts.

The 2006 referendum won approval from 65 percent of District 115 voters. But narrow votes on school-related matters are nothing new in Lake Forest — the 1968 approval of a plan to build the one-school district's west campus passed by just 101 votes.

If this year's referendum is not approved, Superintendent Matt Montgomery said last year that district officials would likely try again on next November's ballot.

"As the results stand right now," Montgomery said, in an election night statement, "we are cautiously optimistic of a successful passage of the referendum."

Preliminary results showed at least 7,371 people cast ballots on the referendum question, amounting to a turnout of about 30 percent, though some late-arriving mail and provisional ballots have yet to be tabulated.

As of Friday, there were 841 uncounted provisional and mailed-in ballots for the entire county. The Lake County Clerk is due to certify the election results by April 20.