Election results: Residents Vote Against Allowing District 200 to Borrow $25 Million

An Oak Park referendum that would have approved School District 200 to borrow $25 million to build a new swimming pool facility, parking garage and classrooms failed Tuesday night by a slim margin.

With all precincts' votes in, according to the Chicago Tribune's numbers, 49.8 percent of voters were in favor of the referendum, while 50.2 percent were against it.

The proposal has been discussed at length for a few years now, but initial conversations about building more updated pools go back a decade and a half.

Here are five things to know about the race:

Oak Park and River Forest High School’s two pools are old. Really, really old.

There’s no doubt these swimming pools need replacement. They were both built in 1928, the Chicago Tribune reported, and have exceeded their useful lives. In March of 2013, the school board vocalized its interest in a pool that was at least eight lanes wide and 50 meters long — as long as an Olympic-sized pool. OPRF officials also said that although renovating the existing pools was initially an option, the project would still be expensive and result in the loss of at least one lane per pool.

This isn’t a $25 million plan — it’s a $44.5 million plan.

District 200 may be asking residents to vote in favor of the school borrowing $25 million, but in reality, plans for the aquatic center and parking garage tally up to a whopping $44.5 million. However, the school board approved a plan in Oct. of 2015 to provide OPRF with $20 million in district reserves.

On that note, we’re not just talking about swimming pools.

The aquatic center itself is proposed to be a two-story, 49,800-square-foot building, which will be built in the place of a parking garage that currently sits just south of campus. Since the old garage will be demolished, the school board has proposed building a new one, alongside the aquatic center, in its place.

But that’s not all. The plan evolved to include updates to locker rooms and then expanded to include building new classrooms and performing arts spaces for students, since now around one-third of the entire student body is enrolled in performing arts activities. The number has grown 20 percent throughout the past six years.

If this referendum is approved, you will be putting money toward this project.

William Blair & Company provided estimates for property tax increases that would come as a result of this plan making it through the election. Property taxes of an average Oak Park home valued at $362,000 would increase by $90 per year; taxes of a River Forest home valued at $530,700 would increase by $136 per year.

Construction is projected to be slow and steady.

If this plan makes it through polling and the residents of Oak Park and River Forest approve this referendum, construction could start anywhere from next spring to the winter of 2018. Once it’s begun, it’s estimated to take two years to complete.

Keep checking Patch for updates on numbers.

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