It was the Riverside School District’s fifth attempt to pass a $15.1 million dollar bond issue that would result in a new 7th-12th grade facility and it has passed. Superintendent Jim Sutton is glad the bond has passed after all this time.

“We are thrilled. This is the fifth attempt I’ve been involved in, in the last 9 years. It’s been a continuing, changing thing as far as the plan is concerned and as far as the support is concerned. It’s grown each time.”

Leading up to the vote, school officials made appeals to the public stating that renovating the existing building would require more than $11 million.

A 60% super majority was required by law for the bond issue to pass, 1,805 people voted and of that, 1,096 voted yes. That is less than one percent of the number of votes needed.

Jim Sutton: “We passed it last night with a rather narrow margin. Even though there were 1,096 yes votes to 709 no votes, that’s still only 60.72% or a .72 margin as far as the number of yes votes that we needed.”

Absentee votes played a key role in this decision. 501 absentee ballots were cast with 367 of them voting in favor of the issue. Votes were counted in the Pottawattamie County Auditor’s Office on Tuesday night.

Jim Sutton says they are still making plans but they do have an idea of when things will be completed and they will begin moving forward soon.
“Well the architects now get in there and work with our staff and our board and put details to the concept that they had proposed. We know its going to be a 7th-12th grade building, we know that we have an auditorium included in that, all of our athletic complexes on one site and now we have to work on what the details are going to look like for that. That is probably going to take 4-6 months and then they can put those plans out for bidders and we should have the bidder selected by November or December. We’ll break ground in the spring of 2014 and plan on moving into the new building in the fall of 2015.”

The new 7th-12th grade facility will be south of Oakland near the intersection of Highways 6 and 59.